Read Online Service with a Smile by P.G. Wodehouse - Free Book Online

to their grandchildren.
    ‘I
asked them what they were laughing at, and they said it was at something funny
which had happened on the previous afternoon. I found it hard to credit their
story.’
    ‘I don’t
wonder.’
    ‘I feel
very indignant about the whole affair.’
    ‘I’m
not surprised.’
    ‘Should
I complain to Constance?’
    ‘I
think I would do something more spirited than that.’
    ‘But
what?’
    ‘Ah,
that wants thinking over, doesn’t it? I’ll devote earnest thought to the
matter, and if anything occurs to me, I’ll let you know. You wouldn’t consider
mowing them down with a shotgun?’
    ‘Eh?
No, I doubt if that would be advisable.’
    ‘Might
cause remark, you feel?’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Never
mind. I’ll think of something else.’
     
     
    2
     
    When a visitor to a
country house learns that his host, as to the stability of whose mental balance
he has long entertained the gravest doubts, has suddenly jumped into a lake
with all his clothes on, he cannot but feel concern. He shakes his head. He purses
his lips and raises his eyebrows. Something has given, he says to himself, and
strains have been cracked under. It was thus that the Duke of Dunstable reacted
to the news of Lord Emsworth’s exploit.
    It was
from the latter’s grandson George that he got the story. George was a small boy
with ginger hair and freckles, and between him and the Duke there had sprung up
one of those odd friendships which do sometimes spring up between the most
unlikely persons. George was probably the only individual in three counties
who actually enjoyed conversing with the Duke of Dunstable. If he had been
asked wherein lay the other’s fascination, he would have replied that he liked
watching the way he blew his moustache about when he talked. It was a
spectacle that never wearied him.
    ‘I say,’
he said, coming on to the terrace where the Duke was sitting, ‘have you heard
the latest?’
    The
Duke, who had been brooding on the seeming impossibility of getting an egg
boiled the way he liked it in this blasted house, came out of his thoughts. He
spoke irritably. Owing to his tender years George had rather a high voice, and
the sudden sound of it had made him bite his tongue.
    ‘Don’t
come squeaking in my ear like that, boy. Blow your horn or something. What did
you say?’
    ‘I
asked if you’d heard the latest?’
    ‘Latest
what?’
    ‘Front
page news. Big scoop. Grandpapa jumped into the lake.’
    ‘What
are you talking about?’
    ‘It’s
true. The country’s ringing with it. I had it from one of the gardeners who saw
him. Grandpapa was walking along by the lake, and suddenly he stopped and
paused for a moment in thought. Then he did a swan dive,’ said George, and eyed
the moustache expectantly.
    He was
not disappointed. It danced like an autumn leaf before a gale.
    ‘He
jumped into the lake?’
    ‘That’s
what he did, big boy.’
    ‘Don’t
call me big boy.’
    ‘Okay,
chief.’
    The
Duke puffed awhile.
    ‘You
say this gardener saw him jump into the water?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘With
his clothes on?’
    ‘That’s
right. Accoutred as he was, he plunged in,’ said George, who in the preceding
term at his school had had to write out a familiar passage from Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar fifty times for bringing a white mouse into the classroom. ‘Pretty
sporting, don’t you think, an old egg like Grandpapa?’
    ‘What
do you mean — old egg?’
    ‘Well,
he must be getting on for a hundred.’
    ‘He is
the same age as myself.’
    ‘Oh?’ said
George, who supposed the Duke had long since passed the hundred mark.
    ‘But
what the deuce made him do a thing like that?’
    ‘Oh,
just thought he would, I suppose. Coo — I wish I’d been there with my camera,’
said George, and went on his way. And a few moments later, having pondered
deeply on this sensational development, the Duke rose and stumped off in
search of Lady Constance. What he had heard