Service with a Smile by P.G. Wodehouse

thought
of something more polished.
    A
reproachful look came into his eyes.
    ‘You usedn’t
to say that when I soaped your back. “Nobody soaps like you, Uncle Fred,” you
used to say, and you were right. I had the knack.’
    The
years fell away from Myra, and she was a child in her bath again.
    ‘Well!’
she said, squeaking in her emotion.
    ‘I see
you remember.’
    ‘Uncle
Fred! Fancy meeting you again like this after all these years. Though I suppose
I ought to call you Mr. Twistleton.’
    ‘You would
be making a serious social gaffe, if you did. I’ve come a long way since we
last saw each other. By pluck and industry I’ve worked my way up the ladder,
step by step, to dizzy heights. You may have heard that a Lord Ickenham was
expected at the Castle today. I am the Lord Ickenham about whom there has been
so much talk. And not one of your humble Barons or Viscounts, mind you, but a
belted Earl, with papers to prove it.’
    ‘Like
Lord Emsworth?’
    ‘Yes,
only brighter.’
    ‘I
remember now Father saying something about your haying become a big wheel.’
    ‘He in
no way overstated it. How is he?’
    ‘He’s
all right.’
    ‘Full
of beans?’
    ‘Oh,
yes.’
    ‘More
than you are, my child. I was watching you sitting there, and you reminded me
of Rodin’s Penseur. Were you thinking of Bill Bailey?’
    Myra
started.
    ‘You
don’t —?’
    ‘Know
Bill Bailey? Certainly I do. He’s a friend of my nephew Pongo’s and to my mind
as fine a curate as ever preached a sermon.’
    The
animation which had come into the girl’s face at this reunion with one of whom
she had such pleasant memories died away to be replaced by a cold haughtiness
like that of a princess reluctantly compelled to give her attention to the
dregs of the underworld.
    ‘You’re
entitled to your opinion, I suppose,’ she said stiffly. ‘I think he’s a rat.’
    It
seemed to Lord Ickenham that he could not have heard correctly. Young lovers,
he knew were accustomed to bestow on each other a variety of pet names, but he
had never understood ‘rat’ to be one of them.
    ‘A rat?’
    ‘ Yes.’
    ‘Why do
you call him that?’
    ‘Because
of what he did.’
    ‘What
was that?’
    ‘Or
didn’t do, rather.’
    ‘You
speak in riddles. Couldn’t you make it clearer?’
    ‘I’ll
make it clearer, all right. He stood me up.’
    ‘I
still don’t get the gist.’
    ‘Very
well, then, if you want the whole story. I phoned him that I was coming to
London to marry him, and he didn’t show up at the registry office.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘Had
cold feet, I suppose. I ought to have guessed from the way he said “Oh, rather”,
when I asked him if he wasn’t pleased. I waited at the place for hours, but he
never appeared. And he told me he loved me!’
    It was
not often that Lord Ickenham was bewildered, but he found himself now unequal
to the intellectual pressure of the conversation.
    ‘He
never appeared? Are we talking of the same man? The one I mean is an
up-and-coming young cleric named Bill Bailey, in whose company I passed fully
three-quarters of an hour yesterday at the registry office. I was to have been
one of his witnesses, lending a tone to the thing.’
    Myra
stared.
    ‘Are
you crazy?’
    ‘The
charge has sometimes been brought against me, but there’s nothing in it. Just
exuberant. Why do you ask?’
    ‘He can’t
have been at the registry office. I’d have seen him.’
    ‘He’s
hard to miss, I agree. Catches the eye, as you might say. But I assure you —’At
the registry office in Wilton Street?’
    ‘Say
that again.
    ‘Say
what again?’
    ‘Wilton
Street.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I
wanted to test a theory that has just occurred to me. I think I have the
solution of this mystery that has been perplexing us. Someone, especially if a
good deal agitated hearing somebody say “Wilton” over the telephone, could
easily mistake it for “Milton”. Some trick of the acoustics. It was at the
Milton Street registry office that