words----"

"It doesn't make any difference. She may have loved me once. Last night
will have killed all that."

"Of course it won't."

"It will. She despises me now."

"Not a bit of it. She knows you simply got cold feet."

"And I should get cold feet if I tried again. It's no good, Bertie. I'm
hopeless, and there's an end of it. Fate made me the sort of chap who
can't say 'bo' to a goose."

"It isn't a question of saying 'bo' to a goose. The point doesn't arise
at all. It is simply a matter of----"

"I know, I know. But it's no good. I can't do it. The whole thing is off.
I am not going to risk a repetition of last night's fiasco. You talk in a
light way of taking another whack at her, but you don't know what it
means. You have not been through the experience of starting to ask the
girl you love to marry you and then suddenly finding yourself talking
about the plumlike external gills of the newly-born newt. It's not a
thing you can do twice. No, I accept my destiny. It's all over. And now,
Bertie, like a good chap, shove off. I want to compose my speech. I can't
compose my speech with you mucking around. If you are going to continue
to muck around, at least give me a couple of stories. The little hell
hounds are sure to expect a story or two."

"Do you know the one about----"

"No good. I don't want any of your off-colour stuff from the Drones'
smoking-room. I need something clean. Something that will be a help to
them in their after lives. Not that I care a damn about their after
lives, except that I hope they'll all choke."

"I heard a story the other day. I can't quite remember it, but it was
about a chap who snored and disturbed the neighbours, and it ended, 'It
was his adenoids that adenoid them.'"

He made a weary gesture.

"You expect me to work that in, do you, into a speech to be delivered to
an audience of boys, every one of whom is probably riddled with adenoids?
Damn it, they'd rush the platform. Leave me, Bertie. Push off. That's all
I ask you to do. Push off.... Ladies and gentlemen," said Gussie, in a
low, soliloquizing sort of way, "I do not propose to detain this
auspicious occasion long----"

It was a thoughtful Wooster who walked away and left him at it. More than
ever I was congratulating myself on having had the sterling good sense to
make all my arrangements so that I could press a button and set things
moving at an instant's notice.

Until now, you see, I had rather entertaine