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

convinced him of the need for a summit
meeting.
    He
found her in her sitting-room. Lavender Briggs was with her, all spectacles and
notebook. It was part of her secretarial duties to look in at this hour for
general instructions.
    ‘Hoy!’ he
boomed like something breaking the sound barrier.
    ‘Oh,
Alaric!’ said Lady Constance, startled and annoyed. ‘I do wish you would knock.’
    ‘Less
of the “Oh, Alaric! “‘ said the Duke, who was always firm with this sort of
thing, ‘and where’s the sense in knocking? I want to talk to you on a matter of
the utmost importance, and it’s private. Pop off, you,’ he said to Lavender
Briggs. He was a man who had a short way with underlings. ‘It’s about Emsworth.’
    ‘What
about him?’
    ‘I’ll
tell you what about him, just as soon as this pie-faced female has removed
herself. Don’t want her muscling in with her ears sticking up, hearing every
word I say.’
    ‘You
had better leave us, Miss Briggs.’
    ‘Quate,’
said Lavender Briggs, withdrawing haughtily.
    ‘Really,
Alaric,’ said Lady Constance as the door closed, speaking with the frankness of
one who had known him for a lifetime, ‘you have the manners of a pig.’
    The
Duke reacted powerfully to the criticism. He banged the desk with a ham-like
hand, upsetting, in the order named, an inkpot, two framed photographs and a
vase of roses.
    ‘Pig!
That’s the operative word. It’s the pig I came to talk about.’
    Lady
Constance would have preferred to talk about the ink-pot, the two photographs
and the vase of roses, but he gave her no opportunity. He had always been a
difficult man to stop.
    ‘It’s
at the bottom of the whole thing. It’s a thoroughly bad influence on him. Stop
messing about with that ink and listen to me. I say it’s the pig that has made
him what he is today.’
    ‘Oh,
dear! Made whom what he is today?’
    ‘Emsworth,
of course, ass. Who do you think I meant? Constance,’ said the Duke in that
loud, carrying voice of his, ‘I’ve told you this before, and I tell it to you
again. If Emsworth is to be saved from the loony bin, that pig must be removed
from his life.’
    ‘Don’t
shout so, Alaric.’
    ‘I will
shout. I feel very strongly on the matter. The pig is affecting his brain, not
that he ever had much. Remember the time when he told me he wanted to enter it
for the Derby?’
    ‘I
spoke to him about that. He said he didn’t.’
    ‘Well,
I say he did! Heard him distinctly. Anyway, be that as it may, you can’t deny
that he’s half way round the bend, and I maintain that the pig is responsible.
It’s at the root of his mental unbalance.’
    ‘Clarence
is not mentally unbalanced!’
    ‘He isn’t,
isn’t he? That’s what you think. How about what happened this morning? You know
the lake?’
    ‘Of course
I know the lake.’
    ‘He was
walking beside it.’
    ‘Why
shouldn’t he walk beside the lake?’
    ‘I’m
not saying he shouldn’t walk beside the lake. He can walk beside the lake till
his eyes bubble, as far as I’m concerned. But when it comes to jumping in with
all. his clothes on, it makes one think a bit.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘That’s
what he did, so young George informs me.’
    ‘With
his clothes on?’
    ‘Accoutred
as he was.’
    ‘Well,
really!’
    ‘Don’t
know why you seem surprised. It didn’t surprise me. I was saddened, yes, but not
surprised. Been expecting something like this for a long time. It’s just the
sort of thing a man would do whose intellect had been sapped by constant
association with a pig. And that’s why I tell you that the pig must go.
Eliminate it, and all may still be well. I’m not saying, that anything could
make Emsworth actually sane, one mustn’t expect miracles, but I’m convinced
that if he hadn’t this pig to unsettle him all the time, you would see a marked
improvement. He’d be an altogether brighter, less potty man. Well, say
something, woman. Don’t just sit there. Take steps, take