Right Ho, Jeeves

“And your Uncle Cyril thought it funny?” “Yes, sir.” “Golly, what a family! Next time you meet your Uncle Cyril, Jeeves, you can tell him from me that his sense of humour is morbid and unpleasant.” “He is dead, sir.” “Thank heaven for that.... Well, give me the blasted machine.” “Very good, sir.” “Are the tyres inflated?” “Yes, sir.” “The nuts firm, the brakes in order, the sprockets running true with the differential gear?” “Yes, sir.” “Right ho, Jeeves.” In Tuppy’s statement that, when at the University of Oxford, I had been known to ride a bicycle in the nude about the quadrangle of our mutual college, there had been, I cannot deny, a certain amount of substance. Correct, however, though his facts were, so far as they went, he had not told all. What he had omitted to mention was that I had invariably been well oiled at the time, and when in that condition a chap is capable of feats at which in cooler moments his reason would rebel. Stimulated by the juice, I believe, men have even been known to ride alligators. As I started now to pedal out into the great world, I was icily sober, and the old skill, in consequence, had deserted me entirely. I found myself wobbling badly, and all the stories I had ever heard of nasty bicycle accidents came back to me with a rush, headed by Jeeves’s Uncle Cyril’s cheery little anecdote about Nicholls and Jackson. Pounding wearily through the darkness, I found myself at a loss to fathom the mentality of men like Jeeves’s Uncle Cyril. What on earth he could see funny in a disaster which had apparently involved the complete extinction of a human creature--or, at any rate, of half a human creature and half another human creature--was more than I could understand. To me, the thing was one of the most poignant tragedies that had ever been brought to my attention, and I have no doubt that I should have continued to brood over it for quite a time, had my thoughts not been diverted by the sudden necessity of zigzagging sharply in order to avoid a pig in the fairway.