Ring for Jeeves

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The waiter, who had slipped out to make a quick telephone call, came back into the coffee-room of the Goose and Gherkin wearing the starry-eyed look of a man who has just learned that he has backed a long-priced winner. He yearned to share his happiness with someone, and the only possible confidant was the woman at the table near the door, who was having a small gin and tonic and whiling away the time by reading a book of spiritualistic interest. He decided to tell her the good news.

"I don't know if you would care to know, madam," he said, in a voice that throbbed with emotion, "but Whistler's Mother won the Oaks."

The woman looked up, regarding him with large, dark, soulful eyes as if he had been something recently assembled from ectoplasm.

"The what?"

"The Oaks, madam."

"And what are the Oaks?"

It seemed incredible to the waiter that there should be anyone in England who could ask such a question, but he had already gathered that the lady was an American lady, and American ladies, he knew, are often ignorant of the fundamental facts of life. He had once met one who had wanted to know what a football pool was.

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