Blandings Castle and Elsewhere by P. G. Wodehouse Read Free Book Online Page A

lordship.
    'Do I look like that?' he said brokenly. He gazed at his son
once more and shut his eyes.
    'Well,' said Miss Yorke, in her detestable managing way,
turning her forceful personality on the newcomer, 'now that
you are here, Freddie Threepwood, looking like Father Christmas,
what's the idea? Aggie told you never to come near her
again.'
    A young man of his natural limpness of character might well
have retired in disorder before this attack, but Love had apparently
made Frederick Threepwood a man of steel. Removing his
beard and eyebrows, he directed a withering glance at Miss
Yorke.
    'I don't want to talk to you,' he said. 'You're a serpent in the
bosom. I mean a snake in the grass.'
    'Oh, am I?'
    'Yes, you are. You poisoned Aggie's mind against me. If it
hadn't been for you, I could have got her alone and told her my
story as man to man.'
    'Well, let's hear it now. You've had plenty of time to rehearse
it.'
    Freddie turned to his wife with a sweeping gesture.
    'I—' He paused. 'I say, Aggie, old thing, you look perfectly
topping in that kimono.'
    'Stick to the point,' said Miss Yorke.
    'That is the point,' said Mrs. Freddie, not without a certain
softness. 'But if you think I look perfectly topping, why do you
go running around with movie-actresses with carroty hair?'
    'Red-gold,' suggested Freddie deferentially.
    'Carroty!'
    'Carroty it is. You're absolutely right. I never liked it all
along.'
    'Then why were you dining with it?'
    'Yes, why?' inquired Miss Yorke.
    'I wish you wouldn't butt in,' said Freddie petulantly. 'I'm not
talking to you.'
    'You might just as well, for all the good it's going to do you.'
    'Be quiet, Jane. Well, Freddie?'
    'Aggie,' said the Hon. Freddie, 'it was this way'
    'Never believe a man who starts a story like that,' said Miss
Yorke.
    'Do please be quiet, Jane. Yes, Freddie?'
    'I was trying to sell that carroty female a scenario, and I was
keeping it from you because I wanted it to be a surprise.'
    'Freddie darling! Was that really it?'
    'You don't mean to say—' began Miss Yorke incredulously.
    'Absolutely it. And, in order to keep in with the woman – whom,
I may as well tell you, I disliked rather heartily from the
start – I had to lush her up a trifle from time to time.'
    'Of course.'
    'You have to with these people.'
    'Naturally.'
    'Makes all the difference in the world if you push a bit of food
into them preparatory to talking business.'
    All the difference in the world.'
    Miss Yorke, who seemed temporarily to have lost her breath,
recovered it.
    'You don't mean to tell me,' she cried, turning in a kind of wild
despair to the injured wife, 'that you really believe this apple
sauce?'
    'Of course she does,' said Freddie. 'Don't you, precious?'
    'Of course I do, sweetie-pie.'
    'And, what's more,' said Freddie, pulling from his breast-pocket
a buff-coloured slip of paper with the air of one who
draws from his sleeve that extra ace which makes all the difference
in a keenly-contested game, 'I can prove it. Here's a cable
that came this morning from the Super-Ultra-Art Film Company,
offering me a thousand solid dollars for the scenario. So
another time, you, will you kindly refrain from judging your – er – fellows
by the beastly light of your own – ah – foul
imagination?'
    'Yes,' said his wife, 'I must say, Jane, that you have made as
much mischief as anyone ever did. I wish in future you would
stop interfering in other people's concerns.'
    'Spoken,' said Freddie, 'with vim and not a little terse good
sense. And I may add—'
    'If you ask me,' said Miss Yorke, 'I think it's a fake.'
    'What's a fake?'
    'That cable.'
    'What do you mean, a fake?' cried Freddie indignantly. 'Read
it for yourself.'
    'It's quite easy to get cables cabled you by cabling a friend in
New York to cable them.'
    'I don't get that,' said Freddie, puzzled.
    'I do,' said his wife; and there shone in her eyes the light that
shines only in the eyes of wives who, having swallowed their
husband's story, resent