I made no attempt to break the n. gently.

'I'll tell you what's up. You know that cow-creamer of Uncle Tom's?'

'No, I don't. What is it?'

'Sort of cream jug kind of thing, ghastly but very valuable. One would not be far out in describing it as Uncle Tom's ewe lamb. He loves it dearly.'

'Bless his heart.'

'It's all right blessing his heart, but the damn thing's gone.'

The still summer air was disturbed by a sound like beer coming out of a bottle. It was Pop Glossop gurgling. His eyes were round, his nose wiggled, and one could readily discern that this news item had come to him not as rare and refreshing fruit but more like a buffet on the base of the skull with a sock full of wet sand.

'Gone?'

'Gone.'

'Are you sure?'

I said that sure was just what I wasn't anything but.

'It is not possible that you may have overlooked it?'

'You can't overlook a thing like that.'

He re-gurgled.

'But this is terrible.'

'Might be considerably better, I agree.'

'Your uncle will be most upset.'

'He'll have kittens.'

'Kittens?'

'That's right.'

'Why kittens?'

'Why not?'

From the look on Bobbie's face, as she stood listening to our cross– talk act, I could see that the inner gist was passing over her head. Cryptic, she seemed to be registering it as.

'I don't get this,' she said. 'How do you mean it's gone?'

'It's been pinched.'

'Things don't get pinched in country-houses.'

'They do if there's a Wilbert Cream on the premises. He's a klep– whatever-it-is,' I said, and thrust Jeeves's letter on her. She perused it with an interested eye and having mastered its contents said, 'Cor chase my Aunt Fanny up a gum tree,' adding that you never knew what was going to happen next these days. There was, however, she said, a bright side.

'You'll be able now to give it as your considered opinion that the man is as loony as a coot, Sir Roderick.'

A pause ensued during which Pop Glossop appeared to be weighing this, possibly thinking back to coots he had met in the course of his professional career and trying to estimate their dippiness as compared with that of W. Cream.

'Unquestionably his metabolism is unduly susceptible to stresses resulting from the interaction of external excitations,' he said, and Bobbie patted him on the shoulder in a maternal sort of way, a thing I wouldn't have cared to do myself though our relations were, as I have indicated, more cordial than they had been at one time, and told him he had said a mouthful.

'That's how I like to hear you talk. You must tell Mrs Travers that when she gets back. It'll put her in a strong position to cope with Upjohn in this matter of Wilbert and Phyllis. With this under her belt, she'll be able to forbid the banns in no uncertain manner. «What price his metabolism?» she'll say, and Upjohn won't know which way to look. So everything's fine.'

'Everything,' I pointed out, 'except that Uncle Tom is short one ewe lamb.'

She chewed the lower lip.

'Yes, that's true. You have a point there. What steps do we take about that?'

She looked at me, and I said I didn't know, and then she looked at Pop Glossop, and he said he didn't know.

'The situation is an extremely delicate one. You concur, Mr Wooster?'

'Like billy-o.'

'Placed as he is, your uncle can hardly go to the young man and demand restitution. Mrs Travers impressed it upon me with all the emphasis at her disposal that the greatest care must be exercised to prevent Mr and Mrs Cream taking –'

'Umbrage?'

'I was about to say offence.'

'Just as good, probably. Not much in it either way.'

'And they would certainly take offence, were their son to be accused of theft.'

'It would stir them up like an egg whisk. I mean, however well they know that Wilbert is a pincher, they don't want to have it rubbed in.'

'Exactly.'

'It's one of the things the man of tact does not mention in their presence.'

'Precisely. So really I cannot see what is to be done. I am baffled.'

'So am I.'

'I'm not,' said Bobbie.

I quivered like a startled what-d'you-call-it. She had spoken with a cheery ring in her voice that told an experienced ear like mine that she was about to start something. In a matter of seconds by Shrewsbury clock, as Aunt Dahlia would have said, I could see that she was going to come out with one of those schemes or plans of hers that not only stagger humanity and turn the moon to blood but lead to some unfortunate male – who on the present occasion would, I strongly suspected, be me –getting immersed in what Shakespeare calls a sea of troubles, if it was Shakespeare. I had heard that ring in her voice before, to name but one time, at the moment when she was pressing the darning needle into my hand and telling me where I would find Sir Roderick Glossop's hot-water bottle. Many people are of the opinion that Roberta, daughter of the late Sir Cuthbert and Lady Wickham of Skeldings Hall, Herts, ought not to be allowed at large. I string along with that school of thought.

Pop Glossop, having only a sketchy acquaintance with this female of the species and so not knowing that from childhood up her motto had been 'Anything goes', was all animation and tell-me-more.

'You have thought of some course of action that it will be feasible for us to pursue, Miss Wickham?'

'Certainly. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Do you know which Wilbert's room is?'

He said he did.

'And do you agree that if you snitch things when you're staying at a country-house, the only place you can park them in is your room?'

He said that this was no doubt so.

'Very well, then.'

He looked at her with what I have heard Jeeves call a wild surmise.

'Can you be … Is it possible that you are suggesting… ?'

'That somebody nips into Wilbert's room and hunts around? That's right. And it's obvious who the people's choice is. You're elected, Bertie.'

Well, I wasn't surprised. As I say, I had seen it coming. I don't know why it is, but whenever there's dirty work to be undertaken at the crossroads, the cry that goes round my little circle is always 'Let Wooster do it.' It never fails. But though I hadn't much hope that any words of mine would accomplish anything in the way of averting the doom, I put in a rebuttal.

'Why me?'

'It's young man's work.'

Though with a growing feeling that I was fighting in the last ditch, I continued rebutting.

'I don't see that,' I said. 'I should have thought a mature, experienced man of the world would have been far more likely to bring home the bacon than a novice like myself, who as a child was never any good at hunt-the-slipper. Stands to reason.'

'Now don't be difficult, Bertie. You'll enjoy it,' said Bobbie, though where she got that idea I was at a loss to understand. 'Try to imagine you're someone in the Secret Service on the track of the naval treaty which was stolen by a mysterious veiled woman diffusing a strange exotic scent. You'll have the time of your life. What did you say?'

'I said «Ha!» Suppose someone pops in?'

'Don't be silly. Mrs Cream is working on her book. Phyllis is in her room, typing Upjohn's speech. Wilbert's gone for a walk. Upjohn isn't here. The only character who could pop in would be the Brinkley Court ghost. If it does, give it a cold look and walk through it. That'll teach it not to come butting in where it isn't wanted, ha ha.'

'Ha ha,' trilled Pop Glossop.

I thought their mirth ill-timed and in dubious taste, and I let them see it by my manner as I strode off. For of course I did stride off. These clashings of will with the opposite sex always end with Bertram Wooster bowing to the inev. But I was not in jocund mood, and when Bobbie, speeding me on my way, called me her brave little man and said she had known all along I had it in me, I ignored the remark with a coldness which must have made itself felt.