From A Pelican at Blandings *** It is possible that solitude and a further go at the pig book might eventually have soothed him, but at this moment the solitude was invaded and the book sent fluttering to the floor. Lady Constance was standing in the doorway, and one look at her told him that trouble was about to raise its ugly head. Well, really, Clarence! He wilted beneath her glare. Galahad, similarly situated, would have met it with a defiant Well, really, what ?, but he lacked that great mans fortitude. Those trousers! That coat! Those slippers! I cant imagine what Vanessa Polk must have thought of you. I suppose she was wondering what a tramp was doing in the drawing-room, and I had to say This is my brother Clarence. I have never felt so embarrassed. Sometimes in these crises Lord Emsworth had found that it was possible to divert her thoughts from the item uppermost on the agenda paper by turning the conversation to other topics. He endeavoured to do so now. Polk, he said. Thats a very peculiar name, isnt it? I remember noticing when I was over in America for your wedding how odd some of the names were that people had. Neptune was one of them. So was Stottlemeyer. And a colleague of Fredericks in that dog biscuit concern of his was a Bream Rockmetteller. Curious, it struck me as. Clarence! Not that we dont have some remarkable names over here. I was reading my Debrett the other day, and I came on a chap called Lord Orrery and Cork. I wondered how you would address him if you met. Ones natural impulse would be to say How do you do, Lord Orrery?, but if you did, wouldnt he draw himself up rather stiffly and say And Cork? Youd have to apologize. Clarence! That fellow Neptune, by the way, was the head of a company that manufactures potato chips, those little curly things you eat at cocktail parties. I met him at a cocktail party Frederick took me to, and we got into conversation and he happened to mention that his firm had made the very potato chips we were eating. I said it was a small world, and he agreed. Sure, he said. Its a very small world, no argument about that, and we had some more potato chips. He said the great thing about being in the potato chip business was that nobody could eat just one potato chip, which of course was very good for the sales. What he meant was that once youve started you havent the strength of mind to stop; youve got to go on, first one potato chip, then another potato chip, then— Clarence, said Lady Constance, stop babbling! He did as directed, and there was silence while she paused to select for utterance one of the three devastating remarks which had come into her mind simultaneously. It was as she stood wavering between them that the telephone rang. Had he been alone, Lord Emsworth would have let it ring till it became exhausted, for his views on answering telephones were identical with those he held on reading letters not from the Shropshire, Herefordshire and South Wales Pig Breeders Association
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 13:08:44 +0000
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