Free Laughing Gas by P. G. Wodehouse Page A

have given anything for a good whack at them. Not since the distant days of my first private school had I been conscious of such a devastating hunger. Peckish is not the word. I felt like a homeless tapeworm.
    It came over me in a wave what a perfect ass I had been in my previous experience as Reginald, Lord Havershot, not to have laid in a stock of these things against some possible emergency like this. I ought to have told myself, I reflected, that you never know when you may not be going to be turned into a kid of twelve, and that, such an occurrence being always on the cards, it is simply loony not to have a little something handy in the ice-box.
    I was, in fact, beginning to feel pretty censorious about my former self, for I can't stand those woollen-headed, thriftless fellows who never think of the morrow, when I
    was brought up short by the sound of footsteps approaching the front door. 'Reggie,' someone called.
    I recognized the voice . It was that of my Cousin Egre mont. I remembered that he had said he was coming to pay me a visit in order to sample my cellar, and I might have known he would not let the grass grow under his feet.
    'Reggie, old bird. Are you in, Reggie?'
    Well, you know how it is. There are moments when you don't want to meet people. You just don't feel in the mood. I was, as I had told Ann Bannister, extremely fond of old Eggy, and in the past - as, for example, on the occasion of that New Year's Eve party of which he had spoken - I had often been glad of his company; but now I found myself shrinking from it. I felt that he would be surprised at finding a golden-haired child where he had expected to find a carroty-haired cousin, and there would be all sorts of tedious questionings and probings, and I simply wasn't equal to it.
    So, to avoid the distasteful encounter, I just slid noiselessly from the chair and ducked down behind it, hoping that when he came in and saw nobody in the room he would go away again.
    A fat chance, of course. I should have known his psychology better. Eggy isn't the sort of chap who goes away from rooms in which there is Scotch whisky just because they are empty. Let the fixings be there, and he does not worry about missing hosts. He came right in and made for the sideboard like a homing pigeon. I couldn't see him, but I heard a musical plashing, then a gollup, then another musical plashing, then another gollup, then a third musical plashing, and I could read his actions like a book. He had had a couple quick, and was now preparing to have another at his leisure.
    Over this one he seemed disposed to linger a bit. The first fierce thirst was slaked, and he could now dally, so to speak and, as it were, rol l the stuff round his tongue. I heard him wander across the room, and the crackle of a match and a wisp of smoke rising to the ceiling showed that he had found my cigars. A moment later, there happened what I might have known would happen. He came over to the arm-chair and sank into it with a luxurious whoof. It was the only comfortable chair in the room, so naturally he had made a bee-line for it.
    So there we were - he plainly all set for a cosy afternoon, and I crouching up against the wall, a bally prisoner. If I had been the Naval Treaty in a safe-deposit box at the Admiralty, I couldn't have been more securely tucked away.
    It was one of those situations which make a chap wrinkle the brow and wonder how to act for the best, and I was engaged in doing this when there was a knocking at the front door.
    Apparently someone stood without
    Chapter 8
    'Come in,' called Eggy.
    I couldn't see, of course, who it was who entered in response to this invitation, but from the fact that he now rose I gathered that the new arrival must be a girl of sorts. You don't get old Eggy hoisting himself out of arm-chairs just to greet the male sex. The voice that spoke told me I was right. It was a crisp, authoritative voice, but definitely female.
    'Good afternoon,' it said.
    'Good