Microsoft Word - Type here book author - Type here book title.html Read Online Free

I’ll tell you what,’ said the Hon.
    Galahad, inspired. ‘I’ll say “towards the end of the nineties”. After all, the exact date isn’t so important. It’s the facts that matter.’
    And, leaping lightly over the spaniel, he flitted away across the lawn.
    Lady Constance sat rigid in her chair. Her fine eyes were now protruding slightly, and her face was drawn. This and not the Mona Lisa’s, you would have said, looking at her, was the head on which all the sorrows of the world had fallen.
    ‘Clarence!’

    ‘My dear?’
    ‘What are you going to do about this?’
    ‘Do?’
    ‘Can’t you see that something must be done? Do you realize that if this awful book of Galahad’s is published it will alienate half our friends? They will think we are to blame.
    They will say we ought to have stopped him somehow. Imagine Sir Gregory’s feelings when he reads that appalling story!’
    Lord Emsworth’s amiable face darkened.
    ‘I am not worrying about Parsloe’s feelings. Besides, he did steal Burper’s false teeth. I remember him showing them to me. He had them packed up in cotton-wool in a small cigar-box.’
    The gesture known as wringing the hands is one that is seldom seen in real life, but Lady Constance Keeble at this point did something with hers which might by a liberal interpretation have been described as wringing.
    ‘Oh, if Mr Baxter were only here!’ she moaned.
    Lord Emsworth started with such violence that his pince-nez fell off and he dropped a slice of seed-cake.
    ‘What on earth do you want that awful feller here for?’
    ‘He would find a way out of this dreadful business. He was always so efficient.’
    ‘Baxter’s off his head.’
    Lady Constance uttered a sharp exclamation.
    ‘Clarence, you really can be the most irritating person in the world. You get an idea and you cling to it in spite of whatever anybody says. Mr Baxter was the most wonderfully capable man I ever met.’
    Yes, capable of anything,’ retorted Lord Emsworth with spirit. ‘Threw flower-pots at me in the middle of the night. I woke up in the small hours and found flower-pots streaming in at my bedroom window and looked out and there was this feller Baxter standing on the terrace in lemon-coloured pyjamas, hurling the dashed things as if he thought he was a machine-gun, or something. I suppose he’s in an asylum by this time.’
    Lady Constance had turned a bright scarlet. Even in their nursery days she had never felt quite so hostile towards the head of the family as now.
    ‘You know perfectly well that there was a quite simple explanation. My diamond necklace had been stolen, and Mr Baxter thought the thief had hidden it in one of the flower-pots. He went to look for it and got locked out and tried to attract attention by . . .’
    ‘Well, I prefer to think the man was crazy, and that’s the line that Galahad takes in his book.’
    ‘His . . .! Galahad is not putting that story in his book?’
    ‘Of course he’s putting it in his book. Do you think he’s going to waste excellent material like that? And, as I say, the line Galahad takes – and he’s a clear-thinking, level-headed man – is that Baxter was a raving, roaring lunatic. Well, I’m going to have another look at the Empress.’

    He pottered off pigwards.
    Ill
    For some moments after he had gone, there was silence at the tea-table. Millicent lay back in her chair, Lady Constance sat stiffly upright in hers. A little breeze that brought with it a scent of wall-flowers began whispering the first tidings that the cool of evening was on its way.
    ‘Why are you so anxious to get Mr Baxter back, Aunt Constance?’ asked Millicent.
    Lady Constance’s rigidity had relaxed. She was looking her calm, masterful self again.
    She had the air of a woman who has just solved a difficult problem.
    ‘I think his presence here essential,’ she said.
    Uncle Clarence doesn’t seem to agree with you.’
    ‘Your Uncle Clarence has always been completely blind to