Read Much Obliged, Jeeves for Free Online Page A

This wooded bit contains one or two rustic benches for the convenience of those who wish to sit and meditate, and as I hove alongside the first of these I saw that there was an expensive-looking camera on it.
    It surprised me somewhat, for I had no idea that Aunt Dahlia had taken to photography, but of course you never know what aunts will be up to next. The thought that occurred to me almost immediately was that if there was going to be a thunderstorm, it would be accompanied by rain, and rain falling on a camera doesn’t do it any good. I picked the thing up, accordingly, and started off with it to take it back to the house, feeling that the old relative would thank me for my thoughtfulness, possibly with tears in her eyes, when there was a sudden bellow and an individual emerged from behind a clump of bushes. Startled me considerably, I don’t mind telling you. He was an extremely stout individual with a large pink face and a Panama hat with a pink ribbon. A perfect stranger to me, and I wondered what he was doing here. He didn’t look the sort of crony Aunt Dahlia would have invited to stay, and still less Uncle Tom, who is so allergic to guests that when warned of their approach he generally makes a bolt for it and disappears, leaving not a wrack behind as I have heard Jeeves put it. However, as I was saying, you never know what aunts will be up to next and no doubt the ancestor had had some good reason for asking the chap to come and mix, so I beamed civilly and opened the conversation with a genial ‘Hullo there’.
    ‘Nice day,’ I said, continuing to beam civilly. ‘Or, rather, not so frightfully nice. Looks as if we were in for a thunderstorm.’
    Something seemed to have annoyed him. The pink of his face had deepened to about the colour of his Panama hat ribbon, and both his chins trembled slightly.
    ‘Damn thunderstorms! ‘ he responded — curtly, I suppose, would be the word, and I said I didn’t like them myself. It was the lightning, I added, that I chiefly objected to.
    ‘They say it never strikes twice in the same place, but then it hasn’t got to.’
    ‘Damn the lightningl What are you doing with my camera?’
    This naturally opened up a new line of thought.
    ‘Oh, is this your camera?’
    ‘Yes, it is.’
    ‘I was taking it to the house.’
    ‘You were, were you? ‘
    ‘I didn’t want it to get wet.’
    ‘Oh? And who are you?’
    I was glad he had asked me that. His whole manner had made it plain to a keen mind like mine that he was under the impression that he had caught me in the act of absconding with his property, and I was glad to have the opportunity of presenting my credentials. I could see that if we were ever to have a good laugh together over this amusing misunderstanding, there would have to be a certain amount of preliminary spadework.
    ‘Wooster is the name,’ I said. ‘I’m my aunt’s nephew I mean,’ I went on, for those last words seemed to me not to have rung quite right, ‘Mrs. Travers is my aunt.’
    ‘You are staying in the house?’
    ‘Yes. Just arrived.’
    ‘Oh?’ he said again, but this time in what you might call a less hostile tone.
    ‘Yes,’ I said rubbing it in.
    There followed a silence, presumably occupied by him in turning things over in his mind in the light of my statement and examining them in depth, and then he said ‘Oh?’ once more and stumped off.
    I made no move to accompany him. What little I had had of his society had been ample. As we were staying in the same house, we would no doubt meet occasionally, but not, I resolved, if I saw him first. The whole episode reminded me of my first encounter with Sir Watkyn Bassett and the misunderstanding about his umbrella. That had left me shaken, and so had this. I was glad to have a rustic bench handy, so that I could sit and try to bring my nervous system back into shape. The sky had become more and more inky I suppose is the word I want and the odds on a thunderstorm shorter than ever, but