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He was always ill at ease in his father's presence and he wished to be elsewhere with all possible speed. He sprang into his trousers with such energy that he nearly tripped himself up. As he disentangled himself he recollected something that had slipped his memory. "By the way, gov'nor, I met an old pal of mine last night and asked him down to Blandings this week. That's all right, isn't it?
As a matter of fact, the house party at Blandings being in the main a gathering together of the Emsworth clan by way of honor and as a means of introduction to Mr. Peters and his daughter, the bride-of-the-house-to-be, most of the occupants of the housekeeper's room were old acquaintances and were renewing interrupted friendships at the top of their voices.
"Your uncle specifically states that father had drunk a quart and a half of champagne before beginning the evening," she went on. "The book is full of stories like that. There is a dreadful one about Lord Emsworth." "Lord Emsworth? Not the one we know? Not the one at Blandings?" A most respectable old Johnnie, don't you know. Doesn't do a thing nowadays but dig in the garden with a spud.
Presently to the left appeared lights, at first in ones and twos, shining out and vanishing again; then, as the shrubberies ended and the smooth lawns and terraces began, blazing down on the travelers from a score of windows, with the heartening effect of fires on a winter night. Against the pale gray sky Blandings Castle stood out like a mountain. It was a noble pile, of Early Tudor building.
Having bought his tobacco and observed the life and thought of the town for half an hour it was market day and the normal stagnation of the place was temporarily relieved and brightened by pigs that eluded their keepers, and a bull calf which caught a stout farmer at the psychological moment when he was tying his shoe lace and lifted him six feet he made his way to the Emsworth Arms, the most respectable of the eleven inns the citizens of Market Blandings contrived in some miraculous way to support.
In order that their gayety might not be diminished and the food turned to ashes in their mouths by the absence from the festive board of Mr. Beach, it was the custom for the upper servants at Blandings to postpone the start of their evening meal until dinner was nearly over above-stairs.
He, too, had remembered. What Lord Emsworth remembered was this: Late in the previous autumn the next estate to Blandings had been rented by an American, a Mr. Peters a man with many millions, chronic dyspepsia, and one fair daughter Aline. The two families had met. Freddie and Aline had been thrown together; and, only a few days before, the engagement had been announced.
"Well, as a matter of fact, Dickie, old top," he said, "not so that you could notice it, don't you know! Things are still pretty much the same. I managed to get away from Blandings for a night, because the gov'nor had to come to London; but I've got to go back with him on the three-o'clock train. And, as for money, I can't get a quid out of him.
Now, however, after five minutes of solitude on the depressing platform of Market Blandings Station, he was what the spiritualists call a sensitive subject.
Once they had got over their disappointment at finding that he was not a dead burglar, the house party rejoiced whole-heartedly at the break in the monotony of life at Blandings Castle. Relations who had not been on speaking terms for years forgot their quarrels and strolled about the grounds in perfect harmony, abusing Baxter. The general verdict was that he was insane.
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