“Then I will put the motion before the Board directly Lady Constance returns.”
“Very good, sir.”
“I should like to splash it on the record once more, Beach, that I am much obliged to you for your sympathy and advice in this matter. I knew you would not fail me.”
“Not at all, sir. I am only too glad to have been able to be of assistance.”
“Oh, and, Beach . . .”
“Sir?”
“Just one other thing. Will you be seeing Cootes, my valet, again shortly?”
“Quite shortly, sir, I should imagine.”
“Then would you mind just prodding him smartly in the lower ribs . . .”
“Sir?” cried Beach, startled out of his butlerian calm. He swallowed a little convulsively. For eighteen months and more, ever since Lady Constance Keeble had first begun to cast her fly and hook over the murky water of the artistic world and jerk its denizens on to the pile carpets of Blandings Castle, Beach had had his fill of eccentricity. But until this moment he had hoped that Psmith was going to prove an agreeable change from the stream of literary lunatics which had been coming and going all that weary time. And lo! Psmith’s name led all the rest. Even the man who had come for a week in April and had wanted to eat jam with his fish paled in comparison.