Pigs Have Wings Read Online Free PDF Page B

been on the impending refreshment, but they were not. A week or two ago he had become engaged to be married, and he was thinking of Gloria Salt, his betrothed. And if anyone is feeling that this was rather pretty and touching of him, we must reluctantly add that he was thinking of her bitterly and coming very near to regretting that mad moment when, swept off his feet by her radiant beauty, he had said to her ‘I say, old girl – er – how about it, eh, what?’ It would be too much perhaps to say that the scales had fallen from his eyes as regarded Gloria Salt, but unquestionably he had had revealed to him in the past few days certain aspects of her character and outlook which had materially diminished her charm.
    Sighting him on the horizon, Lady Constance put down the letter she was reading, one of a number which had come for her by the afternoon post, and greeted him with a bright smile. Unlike her brothers Clarence and Galahad, she was fond of this man.
    ‘Why, Sir Gregory,’ she said, beaming hospitably, ‘how nice to see you. I didn’t hear your car drive up.’
    Sir Gregory explained that he had walked from Matchingham Hall, and Lady Constance twittered with amazement at the feat.
    ‘Good gracious. Aren’t you exhausted?’
    ‘Shan’t be sorry to rest for a bit. Got a blister on my right foot.’
    ‘Oh, dear. When you get home, you must prick it.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘With a needle.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Not a pin. Well, sit down and I’ll give you a cup of tea. Won’t you have a muffin?’
    Sir Gregory took the muffin, gave it a long, strange, sad look, sighed and put it down on his plate. Lady Constance picked up her letter.
    ‘From Gloria,’ she said.
    ‘Ah,’ said Sir Gregory in a rather guarded manner, like one who has not quite made up his mind about Gloria.
    ‘She says she will be motoring here the day after tomorrow, and it’s all right about the secretary.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘For Clarence. You remember you said you would ring her up and ask her to get a secretary for Clarence before she left London.’
    ‘Oh, yes. And she’s getting one? That’s good.’
    It was a piece of news which would have lowered Lord Emsworth’s already low spirits, had he been present to hear it. Connie was always encouraging ghastly spectacled young men with knobbly foreheads and a knowledge of shorthand to infest the castle and make life a burden to him, but there had been such a long interval since the departure of the latest of these that he was hoping the disease had run its course.
    ‘She says she knows just the man.’
    This again would have shaken Lord Emsworth to his foundations. The last thing he wanted on the premises was anyone who could be described as just the man, with all that phrase implied of fussing him and bothering him, and wanting him to sign things and do things.
    ‘Clarence is so helpless without someone to look after his affairs. He gets vaguer every day. It was sweet of Gloria to bother. What a delightful girl she is.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Sir Gregory, again in that odd, guarded manner.
    ‘I do admire those athletic girls. So wholesome. Has she been winning any tennis tournaments lately?’
    Sir Gregory did not reply. His eyes were on the muffin, as it swam in butter before him, and once more he heaved that heavy sigh. Following his gaze, Lady Constance uttered a concerned cry. The hostess in her had been piqued.
    ‘Why, Sir Gregory, you are eating nothing. Don’t you like muffins?’
    This time the sound that emerged from the Baronet, seeming to come up from the very soles of his feet, was nothing so mild as a sigh. It was unmistakably a groan, the sort of groan that might have been wrung from the reluctant lips of a Red Indian at the stake.
    ‘I love ’em,’ he said in a low voice that shook with feeling. ‘But Gloria says I’ve got to cut them out.’
    ‘Gloria? I don’t understand.’
    Until this moment, like the Spartan boy who allowed the fox to gnaw his vitals without mentioning