She knitted the brows a bit, and said she couldn't do much in that direction.

'All I know is that it was made in the time of Charles the Second by some Dutchman or other.'

'Then I think I know the porringer to which you allude, sir,' said Jeeves, his face lighting up as much as it ever lights up, he for reasons of his own preferring at all times to preserve the impassivity of a waxwork at Madame Tussaud's. 'It was featured in a Sotheby's catalogue at which I happened to be glancing not long ago. Would it,' he asked the ancestor, 'be a silver-gilt porringer on a circular moulded foot, the lower part chased with acanthus foliage, with beaded scroll handles, the cover surmounted by a foliage on a rosette of swirling acanthus leaves, the stand of tazza form on circular detachable feet with acanthus border joined to a multifoil plate, the palin top with upcurved rim?'

He paused for a reply, but the ancestor did not speak immediately, her aspect that of one who has been run over by a municipal tram. Odd, really, because she must have been listening to that sort of thing from Uncle Tom for years. Finally she mumbled that she wouldn't be surprised or she wouldn't wonder or something like that.

'Your guess is as good as mine,' she said.

'I fancy it must be the same, madam. You mentioned a workman of Dutch origin. Would the name be Hans Conrael Brechtel of the Hague?'

'I couldn't tell you. I know it wasn't Smith or Jones or Robinson, and that's as far as I go. But what's all this in aid of ? What does it matter if the stand is of tazza form or if the palin top has an upcurved rim?'

'Exactly,' I said, thoroughly concurring. 'Or if the credit for these tazza forms and palin tops has to be chalked up to Hans Conrael Brechtel of the Hague. The point, Jeeves, is not what particular porringer the ancestor has pinched, but how far she was justified in pinching any porringer at all when its owner was a guest of hers. I hold that it was a breach of hospitality and the thing must be returned. Am I right?'

'Well, sir …'

'Go on, Jeeves,' said the ancestor. 'Say I'm a crook who ought to be drummed out of the Market Snodsbury Ladies Social and Cultural Garden Club.'

'Not at all, madam.'

'Then what were you going to say when you hesitated?'

'Merely that in my opinion no useful end will be served by retaining the object.'

'I don't follow you. How about that bargaining point?'

'It will, I fear, avail you little, madam. As I understand Mr Wooster, the sum you are hoping to obtain from Mr Runkle amounts to a good many thousand pounds.'

'Fifty at least, if not a hundred.'

'Then I cannot envisage him complying with your demands. Mr Runkle is a shrewd financier –'

'Born out of wedlock.'

'Very possibly you are right, madam, nevertheless he is a man well versed in weighing profit and loss. According to Sotheby's catalogue the price at which the object was sold at the auction sale was nine thousand pounds. He will scarcely disburse a hundred or even fifty thousand in order to recover it.'

'Of course he won't,' I said, as enchanted with his lucidity as he had been with mine. It was the sort of thing you have to pay topnotchers at the Bar a king's ransom for. 'He'll simply say «Easy come, easy go» and write it off as a business loss, possibly consulting his legal adviser as to whether he can deduct it from his income tax. Thank you, Jeeves. You've straightened everything out in your customary masterly manner. You're a … what were you saying the other day about Daniel somebody?'

'A Daniel come to judgment, sir?'

'That was it. You're a Daniel come to judgment.'

'It is very kind of you to say so, sir.'

'Not at all. Well-deserved tribute.'

I shot a glance at the aged relative. It is notoriously difficult to change the trend of an aunt's mind when that mind is made up about this or that, but I could see at a g. that Jeeves had done it. I hadn't expected her to look pleased, and she didn't, but it was evident that she had accepted what is sometimes called the inevitable. I would describe her as not having a word to say, had she not at this moment said one, suitable enough for the hunting field but on the strong side for mixed company. I registered it in my memory as something to say to Spode some time, always provided it was on the telephone.

'I suppose you're right, Jeeves,' she said, heavy-hearted, though bearing up stoutly. 'It seemed a good idea at the time, but I agree with you that it isn't as watertight as I thought it. It's so often that way with one's golden dreams. The –'

' – best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,' I said helping her out. 'See the poet Burns. I've often wondered why Scotsmen say «gang». I asked you once, Jeeves, if you recall, and you said they had not confided in you. You were saying, ancestor?'

'I was about to say –'

'Or, for that matter, «agley».'

'I was about to say –'

'Or «aft» for «often».'

'I was about to say,' said the relative, having thrown her Rex Stout at me, fortunately with a less accurate aim than the other time, 'that there's nothing to be done but for me to put the thing back in Runkle's room where I took it from.'

'Whence I took it' would have been better, but it was not to comment on her prose style that I interposed. I was thinking that if she was allowed to do the putting back, she might quite possibly change her mind on the way to Runkle's room and decide to stick to the loot after all. Jeeves's arguments had been convincing to the last drop, but you can never be sure that the effect of convincing arguments won't wear off, especially with aunts who don't know the difference between right and wrong, and it might be that she would take the view that if she pocketed the porringer and kept it among her souvenirs, she would at least be saving something from the wreck. 'Always difficult to know what to give Tom for his birthday,' she might say to herself. 'This will be just the thing.'

'I'll do it,' I said. 'Unless you'd rather, Jeeves.'

'No, thank you, sir.'

'Only take a minute of your time.'

'No, thank you, sir.'

'Then you may leave us, Jeeves. Much obliged for your Daniel come to judgmenting.'

'A pleasure, sir.'

'Give Uncle Charlie my love.'

'I will indeed, sir.'

As the door closed behind him, I started to make my plans and dispositions, as I believe the word is, and I found the blood relation docile and helpful. Runkle's room, she told me, was the one known as the Blue Room, and the porringer should be inserted in the left top drawer of the chest of drawers, whence she had removed it. I asked if she was sure he was still in the hammock, and she said he must be, because on her departure he was bound to have gone to sleep again. Taking a line through the cat Augustus, I found this plausible. With these traumatic symplegia cases waking is never more than a temporary thing. I have known Augustus to resume his slumbers within fifteen seconds of having had a shopping bag containing tins of cat food fall on him. A stifled oath, and he was off to dreamland once more.

As I climbed the stairs, I was impressed by the fact that L. P. Runkle had been given the Blue Room, for in this house it amounted to getting star billing. It was the biggest and most luxurious of the rooms allotted to bachelors. I once suggested to the aged relative that I be put there, but all she said was 'You?' and the conversation turned to other topics. Runkle having got it in spite of the presence on the premises of a seventh Earl showed how determined the a. r. had been that no stone should be left unturned and no avenue unexplored in her efforts to soften him up; and it seemed ironical that all her carefully thought-out plans should have gone agley. Just shows Burns knew what he was talking about. You can generally rely on these poets to hit the mark and entitle themselves to a cigar or coconut according to choice.