I can't help thinking it must have been that word “will” that roused dear old Rocky like a trumpet call. It must have brought home to him the realisation that a miracle had come off and saved him from being cut out of Aunt Isabel's. At any rate, as she said it he perked up, let go of the table, and faced her with gleaming eyes.
“Do you want me to go back to the country, Aunt Isabel?”
“Yes.”
“Not to live in the country?”
“Yes, Rockmetteller.”
“Stay in the country all the time, do you mean? Never come to New York?”
“Yes, Rockmetteller; I mean just that. It is the only way. Only there can you be safe from temptation. Will you do it, Rockmetteller? Will you—for my sake?”
Rocky grabbed the table again. He seemed to draw a lot of encouragement from that table.
“I will!” he said.
* * * * *
“Jeeves,” I said. It was next day, and I was back in the old flat, lying in the old arm-chair, with my feet upon the good old table. I had just come from seeing dear old Rocky off to his country cottage, and an hour before he had seen his aunt off to whatever hamlet it was that she was the curse of; so we were alone at last. “Jeeves, there's no place like home—what?”
“Very true, sir.”
“The jolly old roof-tree, and all that sort of thing—what?”
“Precisely, sir.”
I lit another cigarette.
“Jeeves.”
“Sir?”
“Do you know, at one point in the business I really thought you were baffled.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“When did you get the idea of taking Miss Rockmetteller to the meeting? It was pure genius!”
“Thank you, sir. It came to me a little suddenly, one morning when I was thinking of my aunt, sir.”
“Your aunt? The hansom cab one?”
“Yes, sir. I recollected that, whenever we observed one of her attacks coming on, we used to send for the clergyman of the parish. We always found that if he talked to her a while of higher things it diverted her mind from hansom cabs. It occurred to me that the same treatment might prove efficacious in the case of Miss Rockmetteller.”
I was stunned by the man's resource.
“It's brain,” I said; “pure brain! What do you do to get like that, Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat a lot of fish, Jeeves?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh, well, then, it's just a gift, I take it; and if you aren't born that way there's no use worrying.”
“Precisely, sir,” said Jeeves. “If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should not continue to wear your present tie. The green shade gives you a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue with the red domino pattern instead, sir.”
“All right, Jeeves.” I said humbly. “You know!”
THE END