The Inimitable Jeeves: (Jeeves & Wooster) (Jeeves & Wooster Series Book 2)

by P.G. Wodehouse

A roll and butter and a small coffee seemed the only things on the list that hadn’t been specially prepared by the nastier-minded members of the Borgia family for people they had a particular grudge against,

‘Mix me a stiffish brandy and soda.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Stiffish, Jeeves. Not too much soda, but splash the brandy about a bit.’

‘Well, all I can say,’ he cried, ‘is that it’s a bit thick! Preaching another man’s sermon! Do you call that honest? Do you call that playing the game?’ ‘Well, my dear old thing,’ I said, ‘be fair. It’s quite within the rules. Clergymen do it all the time. They aren’t expected always to make up the sermons they preach.’

This time we were roosting at the Senior Liberal, and personally I had found the strain pretty fearful. I mean, when you’ve got used to a club where everything’s nice and cheery, and where, if you want to attract a chappie’s attention, you heave a piece of bread at him, it kind of damps you to come to a place where the youngest member is about eighty-seven and it isn’t considered good form to talk to anyone unless you and he went through the Peninsular War together.