Pigs Have Wings by P. G. Wodehouse

Author:P. G. Wodehouse
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781409063865
Published: 2014-10-06T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

I

The following day dawned bright and clear. The skies were blue, the birds twittered, all Nature smiled. But Nature’s example was not followed by Lord Emsworth. Apart from the galling necessity of having to put on a stiff collar and a top hat and make the early start of which he had spoken, he had caught a cold. Sneezes and snuffles punctuated the unmanly complaints with which he damped all spirits at the breakfast table. Even the thought of having Maudie at his side seemed to do little to alleviate his gloom.

They got him off eventually, though Lady Constance had to exercise the full force of her personality to stop him going down to take a last farewell of the Empress, and Gally was restoring himself with a cigar on the terrace, when he observed Lord Vosper approaching. It seemed to be Lord Vosper’s wish to have speech with him.

And this was odd, for their relations had never been intimate. There was little in the characters of the two that could serve as a common meeting-ground. Orlo Vosper, who was an earnest young man with political ambitions, given, when not slamming them back over the net, to reading white papers and studying social conditions, thought Gally frivolous; and Gally thought Orlo Vosper, as he thought most of his juniors in these degenerate days, a bit of a poop and not at all the sort of fellow he would have cared to take into the old Pelican Club.

But though a man one would have hesitated to introduce to Fruity Biffen, Plug Basham and the rest of the boys at the Pelican, Orlo Vosper belonged to the human race, and all members of the human race were to Gally a potential audience for his stories. It was possible, he felt, that the young man had not heard the one about the duke, the bottle of champagne and the female contortionist, so he welcomed him now with a cordial wave of his cigar.

‘Nice day,’ he said. ‘Going to be hotter than ever. Well, we got old Clarence off.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Never an easy task. Launching Clarence on one of these expeditions is like launching a battleship. I sometimes feel we ought to break a bottle of champagne over his head. Arising from that, have you heard the one about the duke, the bottle of champagne and the female contortionist?’

‘No,’ said Lord Vosper. ‘Have you any smelling salts on you?’

Gally blinked. He found himself unable to follow the other’s train of thought.

‘Smelling salts?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gally. ‘I seem to have come out without mine this morning. Careless. What do you want smelling salts for?’

‘I understand one uses them when women have hysterics.’

‘Hysterics?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Who’s having hysterics?’

‘That large girl in the trousers. Looks after the pigs.’

‘Simmons?’

‘Is that the name?’

‘Monica Simmons, the pride of Roedean. Is she having hysterics?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why is she having hysterics?’

Lord Vosper seemed glad that his companion had put that question.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s what I asked myself. And, what’s more, I asked her.

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