Right Ho, Jeeves (Jeeves, #6)

by P.G. Wodehouse

You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal cords and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower.

Too often, when a chap of your acquaintance is planning to marry a girl you know, you find yourself knitting the brow a bit and chewing the lower lip dubiously, feeling that he or she, or both, should be warned while there is yet time.

It's only about once in a lifetime that anything sensational ever happens to one, and when it does, you don't want people taking all the colour out of it.

The essence of strategy on these occasions is to be as near the door as possible.

"To look at you, one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot—certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are worse a scourge than the Black Death.

He is one of those fellows who, if you give them a thingummy, take a what-d'you-call-it.