"

And I was on the brink of adding that I wouldn't touch Angela with a
barge pole, when I remembered I had said it already and it hadn't gone
frightfully well. I desisted, therefore.

My manly frankness seemed to be producing good results. The homicidal
glare was dying out of Tuppy's eyes. He had the aspect of a hired
assassin who had paused to think things over.

"I see," he said, at length. "All right, then. Sorry you were troubled."

"Don't mention it, old man," I responded courteously.

For the first time since the bushes had begun to pour forth Glossops,
Bertram Wooster could be said to have breathed freely. I don't say I
actually came out from behind the bench, but I did let go of it, and with
something of the relief which those three chaps in the Old Testament must
have experienced after sliding out of the burning fiery furnace, I even
groped tentatively for my cigarette case.

The next moment a sudden snort made me take my fingers off it as if it
had bitten me. I was distressed to note in the old friend a return of the
recent frenzy.

"What the hell did you mean by telling her that I used to be covered with
ink when I was a kid?"

"My dear Tuppy----"

"I was almost finickingly careful about my personal cleanliness as a boy.
You could have eaten your dinner off me."

"Quite. But----"

"And all that stuff about having no soul. I'm crawling with soul. And
being looked on as an outsider at the Drones----"

"But, my dear old chap, I explained that. It was all part of my ruse or
scheme."

"It was, was it? Well, in future do me a favour and leave me out of your
foul ruses."

"Just as you say, old boy."

"All right, then. That's understood."

He relapsed into silence, standing with folded arms, staring before him
rather like a strong, silent man in a novel when he's just been given the
bird by the girl and is thinking of looking in at the Rocky Mountains and
bumping off a few bears. His manifest pippedness excited my compash, and
I ventured a kindly word.

"I don't suppose you know what _au pied de la lettre_ means, Tuppy, but
that's how I don't think you ought to take all that stuff Angela was
saying just now too much."

He seemed interested.

"What the devil," he asked, "are you talking about?"

I saw that I should have to make myself clearer.

"Don't take all that guff of hers too literally, old man. You know what
girls are like."

"I do," he said, with another snort that came straight