Saturday, January 24, 2026

Sprained his brain

     He put on his glasses and hopped out of bed and trotted to the window. And it was while he was on his way there that memory stirred in him, as some minutes ago it had stirred in the Efficient Baxter. He recalled that odd episode of a few days back, when that delightful girl, Miss What's-her-name, had informed him that his secretary had been throwing flower-pots at that poet fellow, McTodd. He had been annoyed, he remembered, that Baxter should so far have forgotten himself. Now, he found himself more frightened than annoyed. Just as every dog is permitted one bite without having its sanity questioned, so, if you consider it in a broad-minded way, may every man be allowed to throw one flower-pot. But let the thing become a habit, and we look askance.

    This strange hobby of his appeared to be growing on Baxter like a drug, and Lord Emsworth did not like it at all. He had never before suspected his secretary of an unbalanced mind, but now he mused, as he tiptoed cautiously to the window, that the Baxter sort of man, the energetic, restless type, was just the kind that does go off his head. Just some such calamity as this, his lordship felt, he might have foreseen. Day in, day out, Rupert Baxter had been exercising his brain ever since he had come to the castle - and now he had gone and sprained it. Lord Emsworth peeped timidly out from behind a curtain.

    His worst fears were realized. It was Baxter, sure enough; and a towsled, wild-eyed Baxter incredibly clad in lemon-coloured pyjamas.

(from Leave It To Psmith,  by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

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