"Jeeves," I said, "Mr. Glossop proposes to sing 'Sonny Boy' at an
entertainment down in the East End next Tuesday before an audience
consisting mainly of costermongers, with a sprinkling of whelk-stall
owners, purveyors of blood oranges, and minor pugilists."
"Indeed, sir?"
"Make a note to remind me to be there. He will infallibly get the bird,
and I want to witness his downfall."
"Very good, sir."
"And when Mrs. Travers arrives I shall be in the sitting room."
Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that in his journey
through life he is impeded and generally snookered by about as scaly a
collection of aunts as was ever assembled. But there is one exception
to the general ghastliness--viz., my aunt Dahlia. She married old Tom
Travers the year Bluebottle won the Cambridgeshire, and is one of the
best. It is always a pleasure to me to chat with her, and it was with
a courtly geniality that I rose to receive her as she sailed over the
threshold at about two-fifty-five.
She seemed somewhat perturbed, and plunged into the agenda without
delay. Aunt Dahlia is one of those big, hearty women. She used to go in
a lot for hunting, and she generally speaks as if she had just sighted
a fox on a hillside half a mile away.
"Bertie," she cried, in the manner of one encouraging a platoon of
hounds to renewed efforts, "I want your help."
"And you shall have it, Aunt Dahlia," I replied suavely. "I can
honestly say that there is no one to whom I would more readily do a
good turn, no one to whom I am more delighted to be----"
"Less of it," she begged; "less of it. You know that friend of yours,
young Glossop?"
"He's just been lunching here."
"He has, has he? Well, I wish you'd poisoned his soup."
"We didn't have soup. And when you describe him as a 'friend of mine,'
I wouldn't quite say the term absolutely squared with the facts. Some
time ago, one night when we had been dining together at the Drones'----"
At this point Aunt Dahlia--a little brusquely, it seemed to me--said
that she would rather wait for the story of my life till she could get
it in book form. I could see now that she was definitely not her usual
sunny self, so I shelved my personal grievances and asked what was
biting her.
"It's that young hound Glossop," she said.
"What's he been doing?"
"Breaking Angela's heart."
(Angela. Daughter of above. My cousin. Quite a good egg.)
"What!"
"I say he's--breaking--Angela's--_heart_!"
"You say he's breaking Angela's heart?"
She begged me to suspend the vaudeville cross-talk stuff.
"How's he doing that?" I asked.
"With his neglect. With his low, callous, double-crossing duplicity."
"'Duplicity' is the word, Aunt Dahlia," I said. "In treating of young
Tuppy Glossop, it springs naturally to the lips. Let me tell you what
he did to me one night at the Drones'. We had finished dinner----"
"Ever since the beginning of the season, up to about three weeks ago,
he was all over Angela. The sort of thing which, when I was a girl, we
should have described as courting."
"Or wooing?"
"Wooing or courting, whichever you like."
"Whichever _you_ like, Aunt Dahlia," I said courteously.
"Well, anyway, he haunted the house, lapped up daily lunches, took her
out dancing half the night, and so on, till naturally the poor kid,
who's quite off her oats about him, took it for granted that it was
only a question of time before he suggested that they should feed for
life out of the same crib. And now he's gone and dropped her like a hot
brick, and I hear he's infatuated with some girl he met at a Chelsea
tea party--a girl named--now, what was it?"
"Cora Bellinger."
"How do you know?"
"She was lunching here to-day."
"He brought her?"
"Yes."
"What's she like?"
"Pretty massive. In shape, a bit on the lines of the Albert Hall."
"Did he seem very fond of her?"
"Couldn't take his eyes off the chassis."
"The modern young man," said Aunt Dahlia, "is a pot of poison and wants
a nurse to lead him by the hand and some strong attendant to kick him
regularly at intervals of a quarter of an hour."