Free Uncle Fred in the Springtime by P.G. Wodehouse Page A

only
danger I can see is that he may get this pig of yours into a friendly game and
take her last bit of potato peel off her. Still, that is a risk that must be
faced.’
    ‘Of
course.’
    ‘Nothing
venture, nothing have, eh?’
    ‘Precisely.’
    ‘Then
suppose we dispense with coffee and go round and see him. We shall probably
find my nephew Pongo there. A nice boy. You will like him.’
     
    Pongo Twistleton had
arrived at Claude Pott’s residence at about the time when Lord Emsworth and his
guest were leaving the Senior Conservative Club, and had almost immediately
tried to borrow ten pounds from him. For even though Horace Davenport had
guaranteed in the event of his soothing Ricky Gilpin to underwrite his gambling
losses, he could not forget that he was still fiscally crippled, and he felt
that he owed it to himself to omit no word or act which might lead to the
acquisition of a bit of the needful.
    In the
sleuth hound of 6, Wilbraham Place, Sloane Square, however, he speedily
discovered that he had come up against one of the Untouchables, a man to whom
even Oofy Prosser, that outstanding non-parter, would have felt compelled to
raise his hat. Beginning by quoting from Polonius’s speech to Laertes, which a
surprising number of people whom you would not have suspected of familiarity
with the writings of Shakespeare seem to know, Mr Pott had gone on to say that
lending money always made him feel as if he were rubbing velvet the wrong way,
and that in any case he would not lend it to Pongo, because he valued his
friendship too highly. The surest method of creating a rift between two pals,
explained Mr Pott, was for one pal to place the other pal under a financial
obligation.
    It was,
in consequence, into an atmosphere of some slight strain that the Lords
Emsworth and Ickenham entered a few moments later. And though the mutual courtesies
of the latter and Claude Pott, getting together again after long separation,
lightened the gloom temporarily, the clouds gathered once more when Mr Pott,
having listened to Lord Emsworth’s proposal, regretfully declined to have
anything to do with removing the Empress from her sty and wafting her away to
Ickenham Hall.
    ‘I
couldn’t do it, Lord E.’
    ‘Eh?
Why not?’
    ‘It
wouldn’t be in accordance with the dignity of the profession.’
    Lord
Ickenham resented this superior attitude.
    ‘Don’t
stick on such beastly side, Mustard. You and your bally dignity! I never heard
such swank.’
    ‘One
has one’s self—respect.’
    ‘What’s
self-respect got to do with it? There’s nothing infra dig about
snitching pigs. If I were differently situated, I’d do it like a shot. And I’m
one of the haughtiest men in Hampshire.’
    ‘Well,
between you and me, Lord I.,’ said Claude Pott, discarding loftiness and coming
clean, ‘there’s another reason. I was once bitten by a pig.’
    ‘Not
really?’
    ‘Yes,
sir. And ever since then I’ve had a horror of the animals.’
    Lord Emsworth
hastened to point out that the present was a special case.
    ‘You
can’t be bitten by the Empress.’
    ‘Oh no?
Who made that rule?’
    ‘She’s
as gentle as a lamb.’
    ‘I was
once bitten by a lamb.’
    Lord
Ickenham was surprised.
    ‘What
an extraordinary past you seem to have had, Mustard. One whirl of excitement.
One of these days you must look me up and tell me some of the things you haven’t
been bitten by. Well, if you won’t take the job on, you won’t, of course. But I’m
disappointed in you.’
    Mr Pott
sighed slightly, but it was plain that he did not intend to recede from his
attitude of civil disobedience.
    ‘I
suppose I shall now have to approach the matter from another angle. If you’re
seeing Glossop at three, Emsworth, you’d better be starting.’
    ‘Eh?
Oh, ah, yes. True.’
    ‘You
leaving us, Lord E.?’ said Mr Pott. ‘Which way are you going?’
    ‘I have
an appointment in Harley Street.’
    ‘I’ll
come with you,’ said Mr Pott, who had marked