'Aunt Dahlia tells me you are staying with her in order to be handy to Market Snodsbury while giving the electors there the old oil,' I said.

'Yes, she very decently invited me. She was at school with my mother.'

'So she told me. I wonder if her face was as red in those days. How do you like it there?'

'It's a wonderful place.'

'Grade A. Gravel soil, main drainage, spreading grounds and Company's own water. And, of course, Anatole's cooking.'

'Ah!' he said, and I think he would have bared his head, only he hadn't a hat on. 'Very gifted, that man.'

'A wizard,' I agreed. 'His dinners must fortify you for the tasks you have to face. How's the election coming along?'

'All right.'

'Kissed any babies lately?'

'Ah!' he said again, this time with a shudder. I could see that I had touched an exposed nerve. 'What blighters babies are, Bertie, dribbling, as they do, at the side of the mouth. Still, it has to be done. My agent tells me to leave no stone unturned if I want to win the election.'

'But why do you want to win the election? I'd have thought you wouldn't have touched Parliament with a ten-foot pole,' I said, for I knew the society there was very mixed. 'What made you commit this rash act?'

'My fiancee wanted me to,' he said, and as his lips framed the word 'fiancee' his voice took on a sort of tremolo like that of a male turtle dove cooing to a female turtle dove. 'She thought I ought to be carving out a career for myself.'

'Do you want a career?'

'Not much, but she insisted.'

The uneasiness I had felt when he told me the beasel had made him knock off cocktails deepened. His every utterance rendered it more apparent to an experienced man like myself that he had run up against something too hot to handle, and for a moment I thought of advising him to send her a telegram saying it was all off and, this done, to pack a suitcase and catch the next boat to Australia. But feeling that this might give offence I merely asked him what the procedure was when you stood for Parliament – or ran for it, as they would say in America. Not that I particularly wanted to know, but it was something to talk about other than his frightful fiancee.

A cloud passed over his face, which I ought to have mentioned earlier was well worth looking at, the eyes clear, the cheeks tanned, the chin firm, the hair ginger and the nose shapely. It topped off, moreover, a body which also repaid inspection, being muscular and well knit. His general aspect, as a matter of fact, was rather like that presented by Esmond Haddock, the squire of Deverill Hall, where Jeeves's Uncle Charlie Silversmith drew his monthly envelope. He had the same poetic look, as if at any moment about to rhyme June with moon, yet gave the impression, as Esmond did, of being able, if he cared to, to fell an ox with a single blow. I don't know if he had ever actually done this, for one so seldom meets an ox, but in his undergraduate days he had felled people right and left, having represented the University in the ring as a heavyweight a matter of three years. He may have included oxen among his victims.

'You go through hell,' he said, the map still clouded as he recalled the past. 'I had to sit in a room where you could hardly breathe because it was as crowded as the Black Hole of Calcutta and listen to addresses of welcome till midnight. After that I went about making speeches.'

'Well, why aren't you down there, making speeches, now? Have they given you a day off?'

'I came up to get a secretary.'

'Surely you didn't go there without one?'

'No, I had one all right, but my fiancee fired her. They had some sort of disagreement.'

I had pursed the lips a goodish bit when he had told me about his fiancee and the cocktails, and I pursed them to an even greater extent now. The more I heard of this girl he had got engaged to, the less I liked the sound of her. I was thinking how well she would get on with Florence Craye if they happened to meet. Twin souls, I mean to say, each what a housemaid I used to know would have called an overbearing dishpot.

I didn't say so, of course. There is a time to call someone an overbearing dishpot, and a time not to. Criticism of the girl he loved might be taken in ill part, as the expression is, and you don't want an ex-Oxford boxing Blue taking things in ill part with you.

'Have you anyone in mind?' I asked. 'Or are you just going to a secretary bin, accepting what they have in stock?'

'I'm hoping to get hold of an American girl I saw something of before I left London. I was sharing a flat with Boko Fittleworth when he was writing a novel, and she came every day and worked with him. Boko dictates his stuff, and he said she was tops as a shorthand typist. I have her address, but I don't know if she's still there. I'm going round there after lunch. Her name's Magnolia Glendennon.'

'It can't be.'

'Why not?'

'Nobody could have a name like Magnolia.'

'They could if they came from South Carolina, as she did. In the southern states of America you can't throw a brick without hitting a Magnolia. But I was telling you about this business of standing for Parliament. First, of course, you have to get the nomination.'

'How did you manage that?'

'My fiancee fixed it. She knows one of the Cabinet ministers, and he pulled strings. A man named Filmer.'

'Not A. B. Filmer?'

'That's right. Is he a friend of yours?'

'I wouldn't say exactly a friend. I came to know him slightly owing to being chased with him on to the roof of a sort of summer– house by an angry swan. This drew us rather close together for the moment, but we never became really chummy.'

'Where was this?'

'On an island on the lake at my Aunt Agatha's place at Steeple Bumpleigh. Living at Steeple Bumpleigh, you've probably been there.'

He looked at me with a wild surmise, much as those soldiers Jeeves has told me about looked on each other when on a peak in Darien, wherever that is.

'Is Lady Worpledon your aunt?'

'And how.'

'She's never mentioned it.'

'She wouldn't. Her impulse would be to hush it up.'

'Then, good Lord, she must be your cousin.'

'No, my aunt. You can't be both.'

'I mean Florence. Florence Craye, my fiancee.'

It was a shock, I don't mind telling you, and if I hadn't been seated I would probably have reeled. Though I ought not to have been so surprised. Florence was one of those girls who are always getting engaged to someone, first teaming up with Stilton Cheesewright, then me, and finally Percy Gorringe, who was dramatizing her novel Spindrift. The play, by the way, had recently been presented to the public at the Duke of York's theatre and had laid an instantaneous egg, coming off on the following Saturday. One of the critics said he had perhaps seen it at a disadvantage because when he saw it the curtain was up. I had wondered a good deal what effect this had had on Florence's haughty spirit.

'You're engaged to Florence?' I yipped, looking at him with a wild surmise.

'Yes. Didn't you know?'

'Nobody tells me anything. Engaged to Florence, eh? Well, well.'

A less tactful man than Bertram Wooster might have gone on to add 'Oh, tough luck!' or something along those lines, for there was no question but that the unhappy man was properly up against it, but if there's one thing the Woosters have in heaping measure, it is tact. I merely gripped his hand, gave it a shake and wished him happiness. He thanked me for this.

'You're lucky,' I said, wearing the mask.

'Don't I know it!'

'She's a charming girl,' I said, still wearing as above.

'That just describes her.'

'Intellectual, too.'

'Distinctly. Writes novels.'

'Always at it.'

'Did you read Spindrift?'

'Couldn't put it down,' I said, cunningly not revealing that I hadn't been able to take it up. 'Did you see the play?'