Pigs Have Wings by P. G. Wodehouse Read Free Book Online Page A

painful?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I did tell you to prick it, didn’t I?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘With a needle. Not a pin. Pins are poisonous. I think they are made of brass, though I must say they don’t look as if they were made of brass. But what I rang up about was this other trouble of yours. Gloria, you know. The dieting, you know. The exercises, you know.’
    Sir Gregory said he knew.
    ‘All that sort of thing cannot be good for you at your age.’
    Sir Gregory, who was touchy on the subject, would have liked to ask what she meant by the expression ‘your age’, but he was given no opportunity to do so. Like most female telephonists, Lady Constance was not easy to interrupt.
    ‘I couldn’t bear to think of you having to go through all that dieting and exercising, because I do think it is so dangerous for a man of your age. A man of your age needs plenty of nourishing food, and there is always the risk of straining yourself seriously. A distant connexion of ours, one of the Hampshire Wilberforces, started touching his toes before breakfast, and he had some sort of a fit. Well, I don’t know how I came to forget it when you were here this afternoon, but just after you had left, I suddenly remembered seeing an advertisement in the paper the other day of a new preparation someone had just invented for reducing the weight. Have you heard of it? Slimmo they call it, and it sounds excellent. Apparently it contains no noxious or habit-forming drugs and is endorsed by leading doctors, who are united in describing it as a safe and agreeable medium for getting rid of superfluous flesh. It seems to me that, if it is as good as they say, you would be able to do what Gloria wants without all that dieting and exercising which had such a bad effect on that distant connexion of ours. Rupert Wilberforce it was – a sort of second cousin I suppose you would have called him – he married one of the Devonshire Fairbairns. He was a man getting on in years – about your age – and when he found he was putting on weight, he allowed himself to be persuaded by a thoughtless friend to touch his toes fifty times before breakfast every morning. And on the third morning he did not come down to breakfast, and they went up to his room, and there he was writhing on the floor in dreadful agonies. His heart had run into his liver. Slimmo. It comes in the small bottles and the large economy size. I do wish you would try it. You can get it in Market Blandings, for, by an odd coincidence, the very day I read about it in the paper I saw some bottles in Bulstrode’s window, the chemist in the High Street. It’s curious how often that happens, isn’t it? I mean, seeing a thing and then seeing it again almost directly afterwards. Oh, Clarence! I was speaking to Clarence, Sir Gregory. He has just come in and is bleating about something. What is it, Clarence? You want what? He wants to use the telephone, Sir Gregory, so I must ring off. Good-bye. You won’t forget the name, will you. Slimmo. I suggest the large economy size.’
    Sir Gregory removed his aching ear from the receiver and hung up.
    For some moments after silence had come like a poultice to heal the blows of sound, all that occupied his mind was the thought of what pests the gentler sex were when they got hold of a telephone. The instrument seemed to go to their heads like a drug. Connie Keeble, for instance. Nice sensible woman when you talked to her face to face, never tried to collar the conversation and all that, but the moment she got on the telephone, it was gab, gab, gab, and all about nothing.
    Then suddenly he was asking himself whether his late hostess’s spate of words had, after all, been so devoid of significance as in his haste he had supposed. Like most men trapped on the telephone by a woman, he had allowed his attention to wander a good deal during the recent monologue, but his subconscious self had apparently been drinking it in all the time, for now it brought up for his