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Lord Emsworth stepped back from the window. He had seen sufficient. The pyjamas had in some curious way set the coping-stone on his dismay, and he was now in a condition approximating to panic. That Baxter should be so irresistibly impelled by his strange mania as actually to omit to attire himself decently before going out on one of these flower-pot-hurling expeditions of his seemed to make it all so sad and hopeless. The dreamy peer was no poltroon, but he was past his first youth, and it came to him very forcibly that the interviewing and pacifying of secretaries who ran amok was young man's work. He stole across the room and opened the door. It was his purpose to put this matter into the hands of an agent. And so it came about that Psmith was aroused some few minutes later from slumber by a touch on the arm and sat up to find his host's pale face peering at him in the weird light of early morning.

"My dear fellow," quavered Lord Emsworth.

Psmith, like Baxter was a light sleeper; and it was only a moment before he was wide awake and exerting himself to do the courtesies.

"Good morning," he said pleasantly. "Will you take a seat?"

"I am extremely sorry to be obliged to wake you, my dear fellow," said his lordship, "but the fact of the matter is, my secretary, Baxter, has gone off his head."

"Much?" inquired Psmith, interested.

"He is out in the garden in his pyjamas, throwing flower-pots through my window."

"Flower-pots?"

"Flower-pots!"

"Oh, flower-pots!" said Psmith, frowning thoughtfully, as if he had expected it would be something else. "And what steps are you proposing to take? That is to say," he went on, "unless you wish him to continue throwing flower-pots."

"My dear fellow...!"

"Some people like it," explained Psmith. "But you do not? Quite so, quite so. I understand perfectly. We all have our likes and dislikes. Well, what would you suggest?"

"I was hoping that you might consent to go down - er - having possibly armed yourself with a good stout stick - and induce him to desist and return to bed."

"A sound suggestion in which I can see no flaw," said Psmith approvingly. "If you will make yourself at home in here - pardon me for issuing invitations to you in your own house - I will see what can be done. I have always found Comrade Baxter a reasonable man, ready to welcome suggestions from outside sources, and I have no doubt that we shall easily be able to reach some arrangement."

He got out of bed, and having put on his slippers, and his monocle, paused before the mirror to brush his hair.

"For," he explained, "one must be natty when entering the presence of a Baxter."

He went to the closet and took from among a number of hats a neat Homburg. Then, having selected from a bowl of flowers on the mantlepiece a simple white rose, he pinned it in the coat of his pyjama suit and announced himself ready.

(PG Wodehouse)