P. G. Wodehouse: Uneasy Money

Chapter 9 (continued)

'Nutty, he's bitten.'

Nutty sat up violently.

'Good gracious! What by?'

'You don't understand. What I meant was that I invited your Mr Chalmers to help me open a hive, and he said "Rather!" and is waiting to do it now. Be ready to say good-bye to him. If he comes out of this alive, his first act, after bathing the wounds with ammonia, will be to leave us for ever.'

'But look here, he's a visitor--'

'Cheer up! He won't be much longer.'

'You can't let him in for a ghastly thing like opening a hive. When you made me do it that time I was picking stings out of myself for a week.'

'That was because you had been smoking. Bees dislike the smell of tobacco.'

'But this fellow may have been smoking.'

'He has just finished a strong cigar.'

'For Heaven's sake!'

'Good-bye, Nutty, dear; I mustn't keep him waiting.'

Lord Dawlish looked with interest at the various implements which she had collected when she rejoined him outside. He relieved her of the stool, the smoker, the cotton-waste, the knife, the screwdriver, and the queen-clipping cage.

'Let me carry these for you,' he said, 'unless you've hired a van.'

Elizabeth disapproved of this flippancy. It was out of place in one who should have been trembling at the prospect of doom.

'Don't you wear a veil for this sort of job?'