Right Ho, Jeeves

“Oh, no, sir.” “Well, that’s what it sounds like. Why don’t you think this scheme will work?” “I fear Miss Angela will merely attribute Mr. Glossop’s abstinence to indigestion, sir.” I hadn’t thought of that, and I must confess it shook me for a moment. Then I recovered myself. I saw what was at the bottom of all this. Mortified by the consciousness of his own ineptness--or ineptitude--the fellow was simply trying to hamper and obstruct. I decided to knock the stuffing out of him without further preamble. “Oh?” I said. “You do, do you? Well, be that as it may, it doesn’t alter the fact that you’ve put out the wrong coat. Be so good, Jeeves,” I said, indicating with a gesture the gent’s ordinary dinner jacket or smoking, as we call it on the Côte d’Azur, which was suspended from the hanger on the knob of the wardrobe, “as to shove that bally black thing in the cupboard and bring out my white mess-jacket with the brass buttons.” He looked at me in a meaning manner. And when I say a meaning manner, I mean there was a respectful but at the same time uppish glint in his eye and a sort of muscular spasm flickered across his face which wasn’t quite a quiet smile and yet wasn’t quite not a quiet smile. Also the soft cough. “I regret to say, sir, that I inadvertently omitted to pack the garment to which you refer.” The vision of that parcel in the hall seemed to rise before my eyes, and I exchanged a merry wink with it. I may even have hummed a bar or two. I’m not quite sure.