Uncle Fred in the Springtime Read Online Free

Except
for the Dunstable nose, always a little startling at first sight, there was nothing
obviously formidable and intimidating about Horace’s Uncle Alaric. A bald head …
A cascade of white moustache … Prominent blue eyes … A rather nice old
bird, you would have said.
    ‘Was
that what you wanted to see me about?’
    ‘No.
Have the car ready to take me to the station directly after lunch. I’ve got to
go to London.’
    ‘But
you only came last night.’
    ‘It
doesn’t matter what happened last night. It’s what has happened this morning. I
glance through my Times, and what do I see? My nephew Horace has gone
and got his engagement broken off.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘You
heard.’
    ‘But
why?’
    ‘How
the dickens should I know why? It’s just because I don’t know why that I’ve got
to go and find out. When an engagement has been broken off The Times doesn’t
print long reports from its special correspondent. It simply says “The marriage
arranged between George Tiddlypush and Amelia Stick-in-the-mud will not take,
place.”‘
    ‘The
girl was Lord Ickenham’s niece, wasn’t she?’ ‘Still is.’
    ‘I know
Lady Ickenham, but I have never met Lord Ickenham.’
    ‘Nor
have I. But she’s his niece, just the same.’
    ‘They
say he is very eccentric.’
    ‘He’s
potty. Everybody’s potty nowadays, except a few people like myself. It’s the
spirit of the age. Look at Clarence. Ought to have been certified years ago.’
    ‘Don’t
you think that it’s simply that he is dreamy and absent-minded?’
    ‘Absent-minded
be blowed. He’s potty. So’s Horace. So’s my other nephew, Ricky. You take my
advice, Connie. Never have nephews.’
    Lady
Constance’s sigh seemed to say that he spoke too late.
    ‘I’ve
got dozens, Alaric.’
    ‘Potty?’
    ‘I
sometimes think so. They seem to do the most extraordinary things.’
    ‘I’ll
bet they don’t do such extraordinary things as mine.’
    ‘My
nephew Ronald married a chorus girl.’
    ‘My
nephew Ricky writes poetry.’
    ‘My nephew
Bosham once bought a gold brick from a man in the street.’
    ‘And
now he wants to sell soup.’
    ‘Bosham?’
    ‘Ricky.
He wants to sell soup.’
    ‘Sell
soup?’
    ‘Good
God, Connie, don’t repeat everything I say, as if you were an echo in the Swiss
mountains. I tell you he wants to sell soup. I go and see him yesterday, and he
has the impertinence, if you please, to ask me to give him five hundred pounds
to buy an onion soup bar. I refused to give him a penny, of course. He was as
sick as mud. Not so sick as Horace will be, though, when he’s finished with me.
I shall start by disembowelling him. Go and order that car.’
    ‘Well,
it does seem a shame that you should have to go to London on a lovely day like
this.’
    ‘You
don’t think I want to go, do you? I’ve got to go.’
    ‘Couldn’t
you tell Mr Baxter to go and see Horace? He is still in London, isn’t he?’
    ‘Yes,
he is, the shirking, skrimshanking, four-eyed young son of a what-not, and I’m
quite convinced that he stayed there because he was planning to go on a toot
the moment my back was turned. If I can bring it home to him, by George, I’ll
sack him as soon as he shows his ugly face here. No, I couldn’t tell Baxter to
go and see Horace. I’m not going to have my nephew, half-witted though he is,
subjected to the inquisition of a dashed underling.’
    There
were several points in this speech, which, if it had not been for the thought
of that poker which hung over Blandings Castle like a sword of Damocles, Lady
Constance would have liked to criticize. She resented the suggestion that
Rupert Baxter was a man capable of going on toots. She did not consider his
face ugly. And it pained her to hear him described as a dashed underling. But
there are times when the tongue must be curbed. She maintained a discreet
silence, from which she emerged a few moments later with a suggestion.
    ‘I
know! Bosham is going to London this morning. Why