“I don’t care about that. What I want to know is why you didn’t explain the whole thing to him right at the start? A word from you would have put everything clear.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now he’s gone off thinking me a looney.”

“I should not be surprised, from his conversation with me, sir, if some such idea had not entered his head.”

I was just starting in to speak, when the telephone bell rang. Jeeves answered it.

“No, madam, Mr. Wooster is not in. No, madam, I do not know when he will return, No, madam, he left no message. Yes, madam, I will inform him.” He put back the receiver. “Mrs. Gregson, sir.”

Aunt Agatha! I had been expecting it. Ever since the luncheon-party had blown out a fuse, her shadow had been hanging over me, so to speak.

“Does she know? Already?”

“I gather that Sir Roderick has been speaking to her on the telephone, sir, and——”

“No wedding bells for me, what?”

Jeeves coughed.

“Mrs. Gregson did not actually confide in me, sir, but I fancy that some such thing may have occurred. She seemed decidedly agitated, sir.”

It’s a rummy thing, but I’d been so snootered by the old boy and the cats and the fish and the hat and the pink-faced chappie and all the rest of it that the bright side simply hadn’t occurred to me till now. By Jove, it was like a bally weight rolling off my chest! I gave a yelp of pure relief.

“Jeeves!” I said, “I believe you worked the whole thing!”

“Sir?”

“I believe you had the jolly old situation in hand right from the start.”

“Well, sir, Spenser, Mrs. Gregson’s butler, who inadvertently chanced to overhear something of your conversation when you were lunching at the house, did mention certain of the details to me; and I confess that, though it may be a liberty to say so, I entertained hopes that something might occur to prevent the match. I doubt if the young lady was entirely suitable to you, sir.”

“And she would have shot you out on your ear five minutes after the ceremony.”

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