'Mrs Travers, sir, on the telephone.'
'Oh?' I said. Preoccupied, don't you know.
'Yes, sir. She presents her compliments and would be glad to know what progress you have made with the article which you are writing for her.'
'Jeeves, can I mention men's knee-length underclothing in a woman's paper?'
'No, sir.'
'Then tell her it's finished.'
'Very good, sir.'
'And, Jeeves, when you're through, come back. I want you to cast your eye over this effort and give it the OK.'
My Aunt Dahlia, who runs a woman's paper called Milady's Boudoir, had recently backed me into a corner and made me promise to write her a few authoritative words for her 'Husbands and Brothers' page on 'What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing'. I believe in encouraging aunts, when deserving; and, as there are many worse eggs than her knocking about the metrop, I had consented blithely. But I give you my honest word that if I had had the foggiest notion of what I was letting myself in for, not even a nephew's devotion would have kept me from giving her the raspberry. A deuce of a job it had been, taxing the physique to the utmost. I don't wonder now that all these author blokes have bald heads and faces like birds who have suffered.
'Jeeves,' I said, when he came back, 'you don't read a paper called Milady's Boudoir by any chance, do you?'