Service with a Smile by P.G. Wodehouse Page A

Lavender Briggs, and went off to scour the countryside for George
Cyril Wellbeloved.
     
     
    2
     
    George Cyril was having
his elevenses in the tool-shed by the kitchen garden when the rich smell of pig
which he always diffused enabled her eventually to locate him. As she entered,
closing the door behind her, he lowered the beer bottle from his lips in some
surprise. He had seen her around from time to time and knew who she was, but he
had not the pleasure of her acquaintance, and he was wondering to what he owed
the honour of this visit.
    She
informed him, but not immediately, for there was what are called pourparlers to
be gone through first.
    ‘Wellbeloved,’
she said, starting to attend to these, ‘I have been making inquiries about you
in Market Blandings, and everyone to whom I have mentioned your name tells me
that you are thoroughly untrustworthy, a man without scruples of any sort, who
sticks at nothing and will do anything for money.’
    ‘Who —
me?’ said George Cyril, blinking. He had frequently had much the same sort of
thing said to him before, for he moved in outspoken circles, but somehow it
seemed worse and more wounding coming from those Kensingtonian lips. For a
moment he debated within himself the advisability of dotting the speaker one on
the boko, but decided against this. You never know what influential friends
these women had. He contented himself with waving his arms in a passionate
gesture which caused the aroma of pig to spread itself even more thickly about
the interior of the shed. ‘Who — me?’ he said again.
    Lavender
Briggs had produced a scented handkerchief and was pressing it to her face.
    ‘Toothache?’
asked George Cyril, interested.
    ‘It is
a little chose in here,’ said Lavender Briggs primly, and returned to the pourparlers.
‘At the Emsworth Arms, for in-stance, I was informed that you would sell your
grandmother for twopence.’
    George
Cyril said he did not have a grandmother, and seemed a good deal outraged by
the suggestion that, if that relative had not long since gone to reside with
the morning stars, he would have parted with her at such bargain-basement
rates. A good grandmother should fetch at least a couple of bob.
    ‘At the
Cow and Grasshopper they told me you were a —petty thief of the lowest description.’
    ‘Who —
me?’ said George Cyril uneasily. That, he told himself, must be those cigars.
He had not supposed that suspicion had fallen on himself regarding their
disappearance. Evidently the hand had not moved sufficiently quickly to deceive
the eye.
    ‘And
the butler at. Sir Gregory Parsloe’s, where I understand you were employed
before you returned to Lord Emsworth, said you were always pilfering his
cigarettes and whisky.’
    ‘Who —
me?’ said George Cyril for the fourth time, speaking now with an outraged note
in his voice. He had always thought of Binstead, Sir Gregory’s butler, as a pal
and, what is more, a staunch pal. And now this. Like the prophet Zachariah, he was
saying to himself, ‘I have been wounded in the house of my friends.’
    ‘Your
moral standards have thus been established as negligible. So I want you,’ said
Lavender Briggs, ‘to steal Lord Emsworth’s pig.’
    Another
man, hearing these words, might have been stunned, and certainly a fifth ‘Who —
me?’ could have been expected, but in making this request of George Cyril Wellbeloved
the secretary was addressing one who in the not distant past actually had
stolen Lord Emsworth’s pig. It was a long and intricate story, reflecting great
discredit on all concerned, and there is no need to go into it now. One
mentions it merely to explain why George Cyril Wellbeloved did not draw himself
to his full height and thunder that nothing could make him betray his position
of trust, but merely scratched his chin with the beer bottle and looked
interested.
    ‘Pinch
the pig?’
    ‘Precisely.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Never
mind why?’
    George
Cyril did mind