“But, my dear old soul,” said Claude. “Be reasonable. We can’t have our movements hampered.”
“The whole essence of the thing, if you understand me,” said Claude, “is that we should be at liberty to flit hither and thither.”
“Exactly,” said Eustace. “Now hither, now thither.”
“Bertie!” said Eustace reprovingly. “Not before the boy!”
“Of course, in a way I see his point,” said Claude. “I suppose the solution of the problem would be to buy a couple of disguises.”
“My dear old chap!” said Eustace, looking at him with admiration. “The brightest idea on record. Not your own, surely?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, it was Bertie who put it into my head.”
“You were telling me the other day about old Bingo Little and the beard he bought when he didn’t want his uncle to recognise him.”
“If you think I’m going to have you two excrescences popping in and out of my flat in beards----”
“Something in that,” agreed Eustace. “We’ll make it whiskers, then.”
“And, as you say, false noses. Right-o, then, Bertie, old chap, that’s a load off your mind. We don’t want to be any trouble to you while we’re paying you this little visit.”
And, when I went buzzing round to Jeeves for consolation, all he would say was something about Young Blood. No sympathy.
“Very good, Jeeves,” I said. “I shall go for a walk in the Park. Kindly put me out the Old Etonian spats.”
It must have been a couple of days after that that Marion Wardour rolled in at about the hour of tea. She looked warily round the room before sitting down.
“Your cousins not at home, Bertie?” she said.
“Then I’ll tell you where they are. They’re in my sitting-room, glaring at each other from opposite corners, waiting for me to come in. Bertie, this has got to stop.”
“You’re seeing a good deal of them, are you?”
Jeeves came in with the tea, but the poor girl was so worked up that she didn’t wait for him to pop off before going on with her complaint. She had an absolutely hunted air, poor thing.
“I can’t move a step without tripping over one or both of them,” she said. “Generally both. They’ve taken to calling together, and they just settle down grimly and try to sit each other out. It’s wearing me to a shadow.”
“I know,” I said sympathetically. “I know.”