“Well, I don’t see how that can hurt him. Don’t go getting carried away by the excitement of the thing and start bringing in coffee.”
“No, sir.”
“And don’t let your eyes get glassy, because, if you do, you’re apt to find yourself in a padded cell before you know where you are.”
“Very good, sir.”
There was a ring at the bell.
“Stand by, Jeeves,” I said. “We’re off!”
CHAPTER VIII SIR RODERICK COMES TO LUNCH
I had met Sir Roderick Glossop before, of course, but only when I was with Honoria; and there is something about Honoria which makes almost anybody you meet in the same room seem sort of under-sized and trivial by comparison. I had never realised till this moment what an extraordinarily formidable old bird he was. He had a pair of shaggy eyebrows which gave his eyes a piercing look which was not at all the sort of thing a fellow wanted to encounter on an empty stomach. He was fairly tall and fairly broad, and he had the most enormous head, with practically no hair on it, which made it seem bigger and much more like the dome of St. Paul’s. I suppose he must have taken about a nine or something in hats. Shows what a rotten thing it is to let your brain develop too much.
“What ho! What ho! What ho!” I said, trying to strike the genial note, and then had a sudden feeling that that was just the sort of thing I had been warned not to say. Dashed difficult it is to start things going properly on an occasion like this. A fellow living in a London flat is so handicapped. I mean to say, if I had been the young squire greeting the visitor in the country, I could have said, “Welcome to Meadowsweet Hall!” or something zippy like that. It sounds silly to say “Welcome to Number 6A, Crichton Mansions, Berkeley Street, W.”