Much Obliged, Jeeves

for Parliament in the by-election at Market Snodsbury, I wrote to him and told him to make my house his base. Much more comfortable than dossing at a pub.’
    ‘Oh, you’ve got a by-election at Market Snodsbury, have you?’
    ‘Under full steam.
    ‘And Ginger’s one of the candidates?’
    ‘The Conservative one. You seem surprised.’
    ‘I am. You might say stunned. I wouldn’t have thought it was his dish at all. How’s he doing?’
    ‘Difficult to say so far. Anyway, he needs all the help he can get, so I want you to come and canvass for him.’
    This made me chew the lower lip for a moment. One has to exercise caution at a time like this, or where is one ?
    ‘What does it involve?’ I asked guardedly. ‘I shan’t have to kiss babies, shall I?’
    ‘Of course you won’t, you abysmal chump.’
    ‘I’ve always heard that kissing babies entered largely into-these things.’
    ‘Yes, but it’s the candidate who does it, poor blighter. All you have to do is go from house to house urging the inmates to vote for Ginger.’
    ‘Then rely on me. Such an assignment should be well within my scope. Old Ginger! ‘ I said, feeling emotional. ‘It will warm the what-d’you-call-its of my heart to see him again.’
    ‘Well, you’ll have the opportunity of hotting them up this very afternoon. He’s gone to London for the day and wants you to lunch with him.’
    ‘Does he, egadl That’s fine. What time?’
    ‘One-thirty.’
    ‘At what spot?’
    ‘Barribault’s grillroom.’
    ‘I’ll be there. Jeeves,’ I said, hanging up, ‘You remember Ginger Winship, who used to play Damon to my Pythias?’
    ‘Yes, indeed sir.’
    ‘They’ve got an election on at Market Snodsbury, and he’s standing in the Conservative interest.’
    ‘So I understood Madam to say, sir.’
    ‘Oh, you caught her remarks?’
    ‘With little or no difficulty, sir. Madam has a penetrating voice.’
    ‘It does penetrate, doesn’t it,’ I said, massaging the ear I had been holding to the receiver. ‘Good lung power.’
    ‘Extremely, sir.’
    ‘I wonder whether she ever sang lullabies to me in my cradle. If so, it must have scared me cross-eyed, giving me the illusion that the boiler had exploded. However, that is not germane to the issue, which is that we leave for her abode this afternoon. I shall be lunching with Ginger. In my absence, pack a few socks and toothbrushes, will you.’
    ‘Very good, sir,’ he replied, and we did not return to the subject of the club book.

CHAPTER Three

    It was with no little gusto and animation that some hours later I set out for the tryst. This Ginger was one of my oldest buddies, not quite so old as Kipper Herring or Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, with whom I had plucked the gowans fine at prep school, public school and University, but definitely ancient. Our rooms at Oxford had been adjacent, and it would not be too much to say that from the moment he looked in to borrow a syphon of soda water we became more like brothers than anything, and this state of things had continued after we had both left the seat of learning.
    For quite a while he had been a prominent member of the Drones Club, widely known for his effervescence and vivacity, but all of a sudden he had tendered his resignation and gone to live in the country, oddly enough at Steeple Bumpleigh in Essex, where my Aunt Agatha has her lair. This, somebody told me, was due to the circumstance that he had got engaged to a girl of strong character who disapproved of the Drones Club. You get girls like that every now and then, and in my opinion they are best avoided.
    Well, naturally this had parted us. He never came to London, and I of course never went to Steeple Bumpleigh. You don’t catch me going anywhere near Aunt Agatha unless I have to. No sense in sticking one’s neck out. But I had missed him sorely. Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, is how you might put it.
    Arriving at Barribault’s, I found him in the lobby where you have the pre-luncheon gargle before proceeding to the grillroom, and after the initial What-ho-ing and What-a-time-since-we-met-ing inevitable when two vanished hands who haven’t seen each other for ages re-establish contact he asked me if I would like one for the tonsils.
    ‘I won’t join you,’ he said. ‘I’m not actually on the wagon, I have a little light wine at dinner now and then, but my fiancee wants me to stay off cocktails. She says they harden the arteries.’
    If you are about to ask me