Service with a Smile Read Free Page A

you …’
    He
broke off. The door had opened again. Lord Emsworth stood on the threshold, his
mild face agitated.
    Connie,
I can’t find my umbrella.’
    Oh, Clarence!’
said Lady Constance with the exasperation the head of the family so often
aroused in her, and hustled him out towards the cupboard in the hall where, as
he should have known perfectly well, his umbrella had its home.
    Left
alone, the Duke prowled about the room for some moments, chewing his moustache
and examining his surroundings with popping eyes. He opened drawers, looked at
books, stared at pictures, fiddled with pens and paper-knives. He picked up a
photograph of Mr. Schoonmaker and thought how right he had been in comparing
his head to a pumpkin. He read the letter Lady Constance had been writing.
Then, having exhausted all the entertainment the room had to offer, he sat down
at the desk and gave himself up to thoughts of Lord Emsworth and the Empress.
    Every
day in every way, he was convinced, association with that ghastly porker made
the feller pottier and pottier. And, in the Duke’s opinion, he had been quite
potty enough to start with.
     
     
    3
     
    As the car rolled away
from the front door, Lord Emsworth inside it clutching his umbrella, Lady
Constance stood drooping wearily with the air of one who has just launched a
battleship. Beach, the butler, who had been assisting at his employer’s
departure, eyed her with respectful sympathy. He, too, was feeling the strain
that always resulted from getting Lord Emsworth off on a journey.
    Myra Schoonmaker
appeared, looking, except that she was not larded with sweet flowers, like
Ophelia in Act Four, Scene Five, of Shakespeare’s well-known play Hamlet.
    ‘Oh,
hello,’ she said in a hollow voice.
    ‘Oh,
there you are, my dear,’ said Lady Constance, ceasing to be the battered wreck
and becoming the hostess. ‘What are you planning to do this morning?’
    ‘I don’t
know. I might write a letter or two.’
    ‘I have
a letter I must finish. To your father. But wouldn’t it be nicer to be out in
the open on such a lovely day?’
    ‘Oh, I
don’t know.’
    ‘Why
not?’
    ‘Oh, I
don’t know.’
    Lady
Constance sighed. But a hostess has to be bright, so she proceeded brightly.
    ‘I have
been seeing Lord Emsworth off. He’s going to London.’
    ‘Yes,
he told me. He seem very happy about it.’
    ‘He
wasn’t,’ said Lady Constance, a grim look coming into her face. ‘But he must do
his duty occasionally as a member of the House of Lords.’
    ‘He’ll
miss his pig.’
    ‘He can
do without her society for a couple of days.’
    ‘And he’ll
miss his flowers.’
    ‘There
are plenty of flowers in London. All he has to do… Oh, Heavens!’
    ‘What’s
the matter?’
    ‘I
forgot to tell Clarence to be sure not to pick the flowers in Hyde Park. He
will wander off there, and he will pick the flowers. He nearly got arrested
once for doing it. Beach!’
    ‘M’lady—?’
    ‘If
Lord Emsworth rings up tomorrow and says he is in prison and wants bail, tell
him to get in touch immediately with his solicitors. Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith
and Shoe-smith of Lincoln’s In Fields.’
    ‘Very
good, m’lady.’
    ‘I shan’t
be here.’
    ‘No, m’lady.
I quite understand.’
    ‘He’s
sure to have forgotten their name.’
    ‘I will
refresh his lordship’s memory.’
    ‘Thank
you, Beach.’
    ‘Not at
all, m’lady!’
    Myra Schoonmaker
was staring at her hostess., Her voice trembled a little as she said:
    ‘You
won’t be here, Lady Constance?’
    ‘I have
to go to my hairdresser’s in Shrewsbury, and I am lunching with some friends
there. I shall be back for dinner, of course. And now I really must be going
and finishing that letter to your father. I’ll give him your love.’
    ‘Yes,
do,’ said Myra, and sped off to Lord Emsworth’s study, where there was a
telephone. The number of the man she loved was graven on her heart. He was
staying temporarily with his old Oxford