“Ah! Things are beginning to move. The name is Psmith. P-smith. The p is silent.”
“Psmith?”
“Psmith.”
Miss Clarkson brooded over this for a moment in almost pained silence, then recovered her slipping grip of affairs.
“I think,” she said, “you had better give me a few particulars about yourself.”
“There is nothing I should like better,” responded Psmith warmly. “I am always ready—I may say eager—to tell people the story of my life, but in this rushing age I get little encouragement. Let us start at the beginning. My infancy. When I was but a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with sixpence an hour by my nurse to keep an eye on me and see that I did not raise Cain. At the end of the first day she struck for a shilling, and got it. We now pass to my boyhood. At an early age I was sent to Eton, everybody predicting a bright career for me. Those were happy days, Miss Clarkson. A merry, laughing lad with curly hair and a sunny smile, it is not too much to say that I was the pet of the place. The old cloisters. . . . But I am boring you. I can see it in your eye.”
“No, no,” protested Miss Clarkson. “But what I meant was . . . I thought you might have had some experience in some particular line of . . . In fact, what sort of work . . . ?”
“Employment.”
“What sort of employment do you require?”
“Broadly speaking,” said Psmith, “any reasonably salaried position that has nothing to do with fish.”