"Пэлем Грэнвил Вудхауз. Much obliged, Jeeves (Премного обязан, Дживс; англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

there were no cocktails before lunch. And do you know why he's
practically on the waggon? Because the girl he's engaged to has
made him take that foolish step. And do you know who the girl he's
engaged to is? My cousin Florence Craye.'
'Indeed, sir?'
Well, I hadn't expected him to roll his eyes and leap about,
because he never does no matter how sensational the news item, but
I could see by the way one of his eyebrows twitched and rose
perhaps an eighth of an inch that I had interested him. And there
was what is called a wealth of meaning in that 'Indeed, sir?' He
was conveying his opinion that this was a bit of luck for Bertram,
because a girl you have once been engaged to is always a lurking
menace till she gets engaged to someone else and so cannot decide
at any moment to play a return date. I got the message and
thoroughly agreed with him, though naturally I didn't say so.
Jeeves, you see, is always getting me out of entanglements with
the opposite sex, and he knows all about the various females who
from time to time have come within an ace of hauling me to the
altar rails, but of course we don't discuss them. To do so, we
feel, would come under the head of bandying a woman's name, and the
Woosters do not bandy women's names. Nor do the Jeeveses. I can't
speak for his Uncle Charlie Silversmith, but I should imagine that
he, too, has his code of ethics in this respect. These things
generally run in families.
So I merely filled him in about her making Ginger stand for
Parliament and the canvassing we were going to undertake, urging
him to do his utmost to make the electors think along the right
lines, and he said 'Yes, sir' and 'Very good, sir' and 'I quite
understand, sir', and we proceeded to the Junior Ganymede.
An extremely cosy club it proved to be. I didn't wonder that he
liked to spend so much of his leisure there. It lacked the
sprightliness of the Drones. I shouldn't think there was much bread
and sugar thrown about at lunch time, and you would hardly expect
that there would be when you reflected that the membership
consisted of elderly butlers and gentlemen's gentlemen of fairly
ripe years, but as regards comfort it couldn't be faulted. The
purler I had taken had left me rather tender in the fleshy parts,
and it was a relief after I had been washed and brushed up and was
on the spruce side once more to sink into a well-stuffed chair in
the smoking-room.
Sipping my whisky-and-s., I brought the conversation round
again to Ginger and his election, which was naturally the front
page stuff of the day.
'Do you think he has a chance, Jeeves?'
He weighed the question for a moment, as if dubious as to where
he would place his money.
'It is difficult to say, sir. Market Snodsbury, like so many
English country towns, might be described as straitlaced. It sets a
high value on respectability.'
'Well, Ginger's respectable enough.'