Pigs Have Wings Read Online Free PDF

thing, finds the sure thing in danger of coming unstuck.
    ‘And the ghastliest part of it all is that, faced with this hideous menace, I am forced to rely on the services of that Simmons girl to prepare the Empress for the struggle.’
    A stern look came into Gally’s face. A jellied eel seller who had seen it would have picked up his jellied eels and sought refuge in flight, like one who fears to be struck by lightning.
    ‘Simmons must go!’ he said.
    Lord Emsworth blinked.
    ‘But Connie –’
    ‘Connie be blowed! We can’t afford to humour Connie’s whims at a time like this. Leave Connie to me. I’ll see that she ceases to bung spanners into the machinery by loading you up with incompetent pig girls when there are a thousand irreproachable pig men who will spring to the task of fattening the Empress for the big day. And while I’m about it, I’ll have a word with young Parsloe and warn him that anything in the nature of funny business on his part will not be tolerated for an instant. For don’t overlook that aspect of the matter, Clarence. Parsloe, with this new pig under his belt, is certain to get ideas into his head. Unless sternly notified that his every move will be met with ruthless reprisals, he will leave no stone unturned and no avenue unexplored to nobble the Empress.’
    ‘Good heavens, Galahad!’
    ‘But don’t worry. I have the situation well in hand. My first task is to put the fear of God into Connie. Where is she? At this time of day, poisoning her system with tea, I suppose. Right. I’ll go and talk to her like a Dutch uncle.’
    Lord Emsworth drew a deep breath.
    ‘You’re such a comfort, Galahad.’
    ‘I try to be, Clarence, I try to be,’ said Gally.
    He screwed the monocle more firmly into his eye, and set off on his mission, resolution on his every feature. Lord Emsworth watched him out of sight with a thrill of admiration. How a man about to talk to Connie like a Dutch uncle could be looking like that, he was unable to understand.
    But Galahad was Galahad.

CHAPTER 2
    UP AT THE castle, Sir Gregory Parsloe, having put on his shoes, was standing at the window of the morning-room, looking out.
    If you like your baronets slender and willowy, you would not have cared much for Sir Gregory Parsloe. He was a large, stout man in the middle fifties who resembled in appearance one of those florid bucks of the old Regency days. Like Beach, he had long lost that streamlined look, and the fact that, just as you could have made two pretty good butlers out of Beach, so could you have made two quite adequate baronets out of Sir Gregory was due to the change in his financial position since the days when, as Gally had put it, he had knocked about London without a bean in his pocket.
    A man with a fondness for the fleshpots and a weakness for wines and spirits who, after many lean years, suddenly inherits a great deal of money and an extensive cellar finds himself faced with temptations which it is hard to resist. Arrived in the land of milk and honey, his disposition is to square his elbows and let himself go till his eyes bubble. He remembers the days when he often did not know where his next chump chop was coming from, and settles down to make up leeway. This is what had happened to Sir Gregory Parsloe. Only an iron will could have saved him from accumulating excess weight in large quantities, and he had not an iron will. Day by day in every way he had got fatter and fatter.
    Outside the morning-room window the terrace shimmered in the afternoon sun, but at the farther end of it a spreading tree cast its shade, and in this cool retreat a tea-table had been set up. Presiding over it sat Lady Constance Keeble, reading a letter, and an imperative urge to join her came over Sir Gregory. After his gruelling three-mile hike, a cup of tea was what he most needed.
    As he made for the terrace, limping a little, for he had a blister on his right foot, it might have been supposed that his thoughts would have