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said.

 
     
    Chapter
Three
     
     
     
    1
     
    One of the things that
made Lord Emsworth such a fascinating travelling companion was the fact that
shortly after the start of any journey he always fell into a restful sleep. The
train bearing him and guests to Market Blandings had glided from the platform
of Paddington station, as promised by the railway authorities, whose word is
their bond, at 11.45, and at 12.10 he was lying back in his seat with his eyes
closed, making little whistling noises punctuated at intervals by an occasional
snort. Lord Ickenham, accordingly, was able to talk to the junior member of the
party without risk, always to be avoided when there is plotting afoot, of being
overheard.
    ‘Nervous,
Bill?’ he said, regarding the Rev Cuthbert sympathetically. He had seemed to
notice during the early stages of the journey a tendency on the other’s part to
twitch like a galvanized frog and allow a sort of glaze to creep over his eyes.
    Bill
Bailey breathed deeply.
    ‘I’m
feeling as I did when I tottered up the pulpit steps to deliver my first
sermon.’
    ‘I
quite understand. While there is no more admirably educational experience for
a young fellow starting out in life than going to stay at a country house under
a false name, it does tend to chill the feet to no little extent. Pongo, though
he comes from a stout-hearted family, felt just as you do when I took him to Blandings
Castle as Sir Roderick Glossop’s nephew Basil. I remember telling him at the
time that he reminded me of Hamlet. The same moodiness and irresolution,
coupled with a strongly marked disposition to get out of the train and walk
back to London. Having become accustomed to this kind of thing myself, so much
so that now I don’t think it quite sporting to go to stay with people under my
own name, I have lost the cat-on-hot-bricks feeling which I must have had at
one time, but I can readily imagine that for a novice an experience of this
sort cannot fail to be quite testing. Your sermon was a success, I trust?’
    ‘Well,
they didn’t rush the pulpit.’
    ‘You
are too modest, Bill Bailey. I’ll bet you had them rolling in the aisles and
carried out on stretchers. And this visit to Blandings Castle will, I know,
prove equally triumphant. You are probably asking yourself what I am hoping to
accomplish by it. Nothing actually constructive, but I think it essential for
you to keep an eye on this Archibald Gilpin of whom I have heard so much. Pongo
tells me he is an artist, and you know how dangerous they are. Watch him
closely. Every time he suggests to Myra an after-dinner stroll to the lake to
look at the moonlight glimmering on the water — and on the Church Lads’ Brigade
too, of course, for, I understand that they are camping out down there — you
must join the hikers.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘That’s
the spirit. And the same thing applies to any attempt on his part to get the
… popsy is the term you use, is it not?’
    ‘It is
not the term I use. It’s the term Pongo uses, and I’ve had to speak to him
about it.’
    ‘I’m
sorry. Any attempt on his part, I should have said, to get the girl you love
into the rose garden must be countered with the same firmness and resolution.
But I can leave that to you. Tell me, how did you two happen to meet?’
    A
rugged face like Bill Bailey’s could never really be a mirror of the softer
emotions, but something resembling a tender look did come into it. If their
host had not at this moment uttered a sudden snort rather like that of Empress
of Blandings on beholding linseed meal, Lord Ickenham would have heard him sigh
sentimentally.
    ‘You
remember that song, the Limehouse Blues?’
    ‘It is
one I frequently sing in my bath. But aren’t we changing the subject?’
    ‘No,
what I was going to say was that she had heard the song over in America, and she’d
read that book Limehouse Nights, and she was curious to see the place. So she
sneaked off one afternoon and went there. Well,