“Yes, I know; but there are limits.”

“Bertie,” said Bingo reproachfully, “I saved your life once.”

“When?”

“Didn’t I? It must have been some other fellow, then. Well, anyway, we were boys together and all that. You can’t let me down.”

“Oh, all right,” I said. “But, when you say you haven’t nerve enough for any dashed thing in the world, you misjudge yourself. A fellow who——”

“Cheerio!” said young Bingo. “One-thirty to-morrow. Don’t be late.”

*    *    *    *    *

I’m bound to say that the more I contemplated the binge, the less I liked it. It was all very well for Bingo to say that I was slated for a magnificent lunch; but what good is the best possible lunch to a fellow if he is slung out into the street on his ear during the soup course? However, the word of a Wooster is his bond and all that sort of rot, so at one-thirty next day I tottered up the steps of No. 16, Pounceby Gardens, and punched the bell. And half a minute later I was up in the drawing-room, shaking hands with the fattest man I have ever seen in my life.

The motto of the Little family was evidently “variety.” Young Bingo is long and thin and hasn’t had a superfluous ounce on him since we first met; but the uncle restored the average and a bit over. The hand which grasped mine wrapped it round and enfolded it till I began to wonder if I’d ever get it out without excavating machinery.

“Mr. Wooster, I am gratified—I am proud—I am honoured.”

It seemed to me that young Bingo must have boosted me to some purpose.

“Oh, ah!” I said.

He stepped back a bit, still hanging on to the good right hand.

“You are very young to have accomplished so much!”

I couldn’t follow the train of thought. The family, especially my Aunt Agatha, who has savaged me incessantly from childhood up, have always rather made a point of the fact that mine is a wasted life, and that, since I won the prize at my first school for the best collection of wild flowers made during the summer holidays, I haven’t done a dam’ thing to land me on the nation’s scroll of fame. I was wondering if he 

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