Free Galahad at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse

and pencil in his room and made for the bar.
And at that precise moment Beach the butler, looking hot and exhausted,
tottered into it.
    His duties
at the luncheon table concluded and no further buttling being required of him
until the dinner hour Beach had started ponderously down the long drive of Blandings
Castle and carried on through the great gate at the end of it and into the high
road. Something approximating to a heat wave was in progress and the sun was
very sultry, but though the poet Coward has specifically stressed the
advisability of avoiding its ultraviolet ray, it was his intention to walk to
the Emsworth Arms, a distance of fully two miles, and in due season to walk
back again.
    It
would have gratified Huxley Winkworth had he known that this athletic feat was
the direct result of his critique of the previous morning. His words had stung
Beach at the time, for there had been a tactlessness in their candour
calculated to wound, but he was a fair-minded man and realised on reflection
that the child, though one might frown on his mode of expressing himself,
might possibly have been right. His figure was perhaps a little too full
and in need of streamlining. The sedentary life of a butler is apt to take its
toll.
    Of his
misadventures on the way — the beads of perspiration, the laboured breath, the
blister on the right foot — it is not necessary to speak. The historian passes
on to the moment when, arriving at the Emsworth Arms, he limped into the bar
and licking his lips surreptitiously requested the barmaid to draw him a mug of
the beer which Sam had found so palatable. He felt that he had earned it.
    The
barmaid’s name was Marlene Wellbeloved and she was the niece of George Cyril Wellbeloved,
Lord Emsworth’s former pigman. Beach had never been fond of George Cyril,
considering him a low proletarian and worse than that a man with no respect
for his social superiors. Word had reached him that on several occasions he had
been referred to by this untouchable as ‘Old Fatty’ and ‘that stuffed shirt’,
and the occasion when the other had addressed him with the frightful words
‘Hoy, cocky’ was still green in his memory. Nothing in the way of chumminess
could ever exist between this degraded ex-pigman and himself, but for Marlene
he had a tolerant liking, and when after a few desultory exchanges he took out
the silver watch he had won in the darts tournament to see how the time was
getting along and she said, ‘Oo, Mr Beach, can I look at that?’ he readily
consented. He unhooked it from his waistcoat and laid it on the counter, well
pleased with her girlish interest.
    Her
reactions were all that could have been desired. She uttered two squeaks and a giggle.
    ‘Why,
it’s beautiful, Mr Beach!’ A very handsome trophy.’
    And you
really won it playing darts?’
    ‘I was
so fortunate.’
    ‘Well,
I think it’s lovely.’
    It was
as she was saying You must be terribly good at darts, Mr Beach, and Beach was
deprecating her praise with a modest gesture of the hand that Constable Evans
of the Market Blandings police force entered the bar. He had parked his
bicycle outside and was coming in for a quick one before resuming his rounds.
On seeing Beach, he temporarily forgot his mission. At the station house that
morning he had heard a good one from his sergeant and he wanted to pass it
along.
    ‘Hi, Mr
Beach.’
    ‘Good
afternoon, Mr Evans.’ ‘Got a story for you.’
    ‘Indeed.’
    ‘Not
for your ears, Marlene. Come outside, Mr Beach.’
    They
went out together just as Sam reached the doorway. A collision was unavoidable.
    ‘Pardon me, sir,’ said Beach.
    ‘My
fault. Entirely my fault. Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ said Sam.
    He
spoke with a gay lilt in his voice, for he was in buoyant and optimistic mood.
It was not only the circumstances of having finished his story and seen the
last of a kitten he had never been fond of that induced this sense of
well-being. His conversation with Gally at Halsey