Service with a Smile Read Free Page B

friend, Lord Ickenham’s nephew, Pongo Twistleton.
But until now there had been no opportunity to call it.
    Seated
at the instrument with a wary eye on the door, for though Lord Emsworth had
left, who knew that Lavender Briggs might not pop in at any moment, she heard
the bell ringing in distant London, and presently a voice spoke.
    ‘Darling!’
said Myra. ‘Is that you, darling? This is me, darling.’
    ‘Darling!’
said the voice devoutly.
    ‘Darling,’
said Myra, ‘the most wonderful thing has happened, darling. Lady Constance is
having her hair done ‘tomorrow.’
    ‘Oh,
yes?’ said the voice, seeming a little puzzled, as if wondering whether it
would be in order to express a hope that she would have a fine day for it.
    ‘Don’t
you get it, dumb-bell? She has to go to Shrewsbury, and she’ll be away all day,
so I can dash up to London and we can get married.’
    There
was a momentary silence at the other end of the wire. One would have gathered
that the owner of the voice had had his breath taken away. Recovering it, he
said:
    ‘I see.’
    ‘Aren’t
you pleased?’
    ‘Oh,
rather!’
    ‘Well,
you don’t sound as if you were. Listen, darling. When I was in London, I did a
good deal of looking around for registry offices, just in case. I found one in
Milton Street. Meet me there tomorrow at two sharp. I must hang up now,
darling. Somebody may come in. Good-bye, darling.’
    ‘Good-bye,
darling.’
    ‘Till
tomorrow, darling.’
    ‘Right
ho, darling.’
    ‘Good-bye,
darling.’
    And if
they’re listening in at the Market Blandings exchange, thought Myra, as she
replaced the receiver, that’ll give them something to chat about over their tea
and crumpets.

 
     
    Chapter
Two
     
     
     
    1
     
    ‘And now,’ said Pongo Twistleton,
crushing out his cigarette in the ash tray and speaking with a note of quiet
satisfaction in his voice, ‘I shall have to be buzzing along. Got a
date.’
    He had
been giving his uncle, Lord Ickenham, lunch at the Drones Club, and a very
agreeable function he had found it, for the other, who like Lord Emsworth had
graced the opening of Parliament with his presence, had been very entertaining
on the subject of his experiences. But what had given him even more pleasure
than his relative’s mordant critique of the appearance of the four pursuivants,
Rouge Croix, Bluemantle, Rouge Dragon and Portcullis, as they headed the
procession, had been the stimulating thought that, having this engagement, he
ran no risk at the conclusion of the meal of being enticed by his guest into
what the latter called one of their pleasant and instructive afternoons. The
ordeal of sharing these in the past had never failed to freeze his blood. The
occasion when they had gone to the dog races together some years previously
remained particularly green in his memory.
    Of
Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, a thoughtful
critic had once said that in the late afternoon of his life he retained,
together with a juvenile waistline, the bright enthusiasms and fresh,
unspoiled outlook of a slightly inebriated undergraduate, and no one who knew
him would have disputed the accuracy of the statement. As a young man in
America, before a number of deaths in the family had led to his succession to
the title, he had been at various times a cowboy, a soda-jerker, a newspaper
reporter and a prospector in the Mojave Desert, and there was not a ranch, a
drug-store, a newspaper office or a sandy waste with which he had been
connected that he had not done his best to enliven. His hair today was grey,
but it was still his aim to enliven, as far as lay within his power, any
environment in which he found himself. He liked, as he often said, to spread
sweetness and light or, as he sometimes put it, give service with a smile. He
was a tall distinguished-looking man with a jaunty moustache and an alert and
enterprising eye. In this eye, as he turned it on his nephew, there was a look
of