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

for being dead in a ditch. Not, I mean, if you want to regard
yourself as a preux chevalier, as the expression is, which is
always my aim. But just as I was about to put in my order for
sackcloth and ashes, up, as I say, popped Spode, now going about
under the alias of Lord Sidcup. He had loved her since she was so
high but had never got around to mentioning it, and when he did so
now, they clicked immediately. And the thought that she was safely
out of circulation and no longer a menace was possibly the prime
ingredient in my current euphoria.
I think that makes everything clear to the meanest
intelligence, does it not? Right ho, so we can go ahead. Where were
we? Ah yes, I had just told Jeeves that I was sitting on top of the
world with a rainbow round my shoulder, but expressing a doubt as
to whether this state of things would last, and how well-founded
that doubt proved to be; for scarcely a forkful of eggs and b later
it was borne in upon me that life was not the grand sweet song I
had supposed it to be, but, as you might say, stern and earnest and
full of bumps.
'Was I mistaken, Jeeves,' I said, making idle conversation as I
sipped my coffee, 'or as the mists of sleep shredded away this
morning did I hear your typewriter going?'
'Yes, sir. I was engaged in composition.'
'A dutiful letter to Charlie Silversmith?' I said, alluding to
his uncle who held the post of butler at Deverill Hall, where we
had once been pleasant visitors. 'Or possibly a lyric in the manner
of the bloke who advocates gathering rosebuds?'
'Neither, sir. I was recording the recent happenings at
Totleigh Towers for the club book.'
And here, dash it, I must once more ask what I may call the old
sweats to let their attention wander while I put the new arrivals
abreast.
Jeeves, you must know (I am addressing the new arrivals),
belongs to a club for butlers and gentlemen's gentlemen round
Curzon Street way, and one of the rules there is that every member
must contribute to the club book the latest information concerning
the fellow he's working for, the idea being to inform those seeking
employment of the sort of thing they will be taking on. If a member
is contemplating signing up with someone, he looks him up in the
club book, and if he finds that he puts out crumbs for the birdies
every morning and repeatedly saves golden-haired children from
being run over by automobiles, he knows he is on a good thing and
has no hesitation in accepting office. Whereas if the book informs
him that the fellow habitually kicks starving dogs and generally
begins the day by throwing the breakfast porridge at his personal
attendant, he is warned in time to steer clear of him.
Which is all very well and one follows the train of thought,
but in my opinion such a book is pure dynamite and ought not to be
permitted. There are, Jeeves has informed me, eleven pages in it
about me; and what will the harvest be, I ask him, if it falls into
the hands of my Aunt Agatha, with whom my standing is already low.