“Car? What car?”

“The car to take you to the station.”

“Station? What station?”

Rupert Baxter preserved his calm. There were times when he found his employer a little trying, but he never showed it.

“You have perhaps forgotten, Lord Emsworth, that you arranged with Lady Constance to go to London this afternoon.”

“Go to London!” gasped Lord Emsworth, appalled. “In weather like this? With a thousand things to attend to in the garden? What a perfectly preposterous notion! Why should I go to London? I hate London.”

“You arranged with Lady Constance that you would give Mr. McTodd lunch to-morrow at your club.”

“Who the devil is Mr. McTodd?”

“The well-known Canadian poet.”

[p. 13]“Never heard of him.”

[p. 13]

“Lady Constance has long been a great admirer of his work. She wrote inviting him, should he ever come to England, to pay a visit to Blandings. He is now in London and is to come down to-morrow for two weeks. Lady Constance’s suggestion was that, as a compliment to Mr. McTodd’s eminence in the world of literature, you should meet him in London and bring him back here yourself.”

Lord Emsworth remembered now. He also remembered that this positively infernal scheme had not been his sister Constance’s in the first place. It was Baxter who had made the suggestion, and Constance had approved. He made use of the recovered pince-nez to glower through them at his secretary; and not for the first time in recent months was aware of a feeling that this fellow Baxter was becoming a dashed infliction. Baxter was getting above himself, throwing his weight about, making himself a confounded nuisance. He wished he could get rid of the man. But where could he find an adequate successor? That was the trouble. With all his drawbacks, Baxter was efficient. Nevertheless, for a moment Lord Emsworth toyed with the pleasant dream of dismissing him. And it is possible, such was his exasperation, that he might on this occasion have done something practical in that direction, had not the library door at 

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