Free Blandings Castle and Elsewhere by P. G. Wodehouse Page A

repeating
them all the way to Market Blandings, had he not, as was his
invariable practice when travelling by rail, fallen asleep after the
first ten minutes of the journey.
    The stopping of the train at Swindon Junction woke him with
    a start. He sat up, wondering, after his usual fashion on these occasions,
    who and where he was. Memory returned to him, but a memory that was, alas,
    incomplete. He remembered his name. He remembered that he was on his way home
    from a visit to London. But what it was that you said to a pig when inviting
    it to drop in for a bite of dinner he had completely forgotten.
     
    It was the opinion of Lady Constance Keeble, expressed
verbally during dinner in the brief intervals when they were
alone, and by means of silent telepathy when Beach, the butler,
was adding his dignified presence to the proceedings, that her
brother Clarence, in his expedition to London to put matters
plainly to James Belford, had made an outstanding idiot of
himself.
    There had been no need whatever to invite the man Belford
to lunch; but, having invited him to lunch, to leave him sitting,
without having clearly stated that Angela would have no money
for four years, was the act of a congenital imbecile. Lady Constance
had been aware ever since their childhood days that her
brother had about as much sense as a—
    Here Beach entered, superintending the bringing-in of the
savoury, and she had been obliged to suspend her remarks.
    This sort of conversation is never agreeable to a sensitive man,
and his lordship had removed himself from the danger zone as
soon as he could manage it. He was now seated in the library,
sipping port and straining a brain which Nature had never
intended for hard exercise in an effort to bring back that word
of magic of which his unfortunate habit of sleeping in trains had
robbed him.
    'Pig–'
    He could remember as far as that; but of what avail was a
single syllable? Besides, weak as his memory was, he could recall
that the whole gist or nub of the thing lay in the syllable that
followed. The 'pig' was a mere preliminary.
    Lord Emsworth finished his port and got up. He felt restless,
stifled. The summer night seemed to call to him like some silvervoiced
swineherd calling to his pig. Possibly, he thought, a breath
of fresh air might stimulate his brain-cells. He wandered downstairs;
and, having dug a shocking old slouch hat out of the
cupboard where he hid it to keep his sister Constance from
impounding and burning it, he strode heavily out into the garden.
    He was pottering aimlessly to and fro in the parts adjacent
to the rear of the castle when there appeared in his path a slender
female form. He recognized it without pleasure. Any unbiased
judge would have said that his niece Angela, standing there in
the soft, pale light, looked like some dainty spirit of the Moon.
Lord Emsworth was not an unbiased judge. To him Angela
merely looked like Trouble. The march of civilization has
given the modern girl a vocabulary and an ability to use it
which her grandmother never had. Lord Emsworth would not
have minded meeting Angela's grandmother a bit.
    'Is that you, my dear?' he said nervously.
    'Yes.'
    'I didn't see you at dinner.'
    'I didn't want any dinner. The food would have choked me.
I can't eat.'
    'It's precisely the same with my pig,' said his lordship. 'Young
Belford tells me—'
    Into Angela's queenly disdain there flashed a sudden
animation.
    'Have you seen Jimmy? What did he say?'
    'That's just what I can't remember. It began with the word
    "Pig" —'
    'But after he had finished talking about you, I mean. Didn't
he say anything about coming down here?'
    'Not that I remember.'
    'I expect you weren't listening. You've got a very annoying
habit, Uncle Clarence,' said Angela maternally, 'of switching
your mind off and just going blah when people are talking to
you. It gets you very much disliked on all sides. Didn't Jimmy say
anything about me?'
    'I fancy so. Yes, I am nearly sure he