Work Text:
"What ho, Student! Jolly good work and all that rot. But I say, that is some dashed rummy punctuation, I mean to say, what? Bally difficult to parse, if that's the word I want. If you were a bit tight when you wrote it, well, I can't say I blame you. (I don't think I'd make it through a stack of these thingummies without a restorative glass of the old w. and s.)
But next time, it would - what's the word I want, Jeeves? Starts with be?"
"Behoove, sir."
"That's the ticket. Next time, old thing, it would behoove you to tackle the thing again once you've slept it off. Before turning it in, I mean. Did I miss anything, Jeeves?"
"It would be advisable, sir, to include a gentle reminder that, in spite of the tendency to anglicize it away in colloquial speech, the term Homo sapiens should always end in an 's.'"
"My word, Jeeves, shouldn't they know that already?"
"Indubitably, sir."
"Even I know that. It's something to do with Latin partridges."
"Participles, sir. I fear that the merits of a classical education are no longer as well-regarded as once they were."
"I was never any great decliner of n.'s and conjugator of v's, and what not, but it does seem a shame to let the old sys. die out. There's not a member of the Drones who wasn't squeezed through a classical education during their formative years."
"I suppose there is also that point to be considered, sir."
Finis