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Page 78
"Yes?"
"If I could have accepted the mouse from anyone I should
certainly have accepted it from you."
CHAPTER VII
It is worthy of record, in the light of after events, that at the
beginning of their visit it was the general opinion of the guests
gathered together at Blandings Castle that the place was dull.
The house party had that air of torpor which one sees in the
saloon passengers of an Atlantic liner--that appearance of
resignation to an enforced idleness and a monotony to be broken
only by meals. Lord Emsworth's guests gave the impression,
collectively, of being just about to yawn and look at their
watches.
This was partly the fault of the time of year, for most house
parties are dull if they happen to fall between the hunting and
the shooting seasons, but must be attributed chiefly to Lord
Emsworth's extremely sketchy notions of the duties of a host.
A host has no right to interne a regiment of his relations in his
house unless he also invites lively and agreeable outsiders to
meet them. If he does commit this solecism the least he can do is
to work himself to the bone in the effort to invent amusements
and diversions for his victims. Lord Emsworth had failed badly in
both these matters. With the exception of Mr. Peters, his
daughter Aline and George Emerson, there was nobody in the house
who did not belong to the clan; and, as for his exerting himself
to entertain, the company was lucky if it caught a glimpse of its
host at meals.
Lord Emsworth belonged to the people-who-like-to-be-left-alone-
to-amuse-themselves-when-they-come-to-a-place school of hosts. He
pottered about the garden in an old coat--now uprooting a weed,
now wrangling with the autocrat from Scotland, who was
theoretically in his service as head gardener---dreamily
satisfied, when he thought of them at all, that his guests were
as perfectly happy as he was.
Apart from his son Freddie, whom he had long since dismissed as a
youth of abnormal tastes, from whom nothing reasonable was to be
expected, he could not imagine anyone not being content merely to
be at Blandings when the buds were bursting on the trees.
A resolute hostess might have saved the situation; but Lady Ann
Warblington's abilities in that direction stopped short at
leaving everything to Mrs. Twemlow and writing letters in her
bedroom. When Lady Ann Warblington was not writing letters in her
bedroom--which was seldom, for she had an apparently
inexhaustible correspondence--she was nursing sick headaches in
it. She was one of those hostesses whom a guest never sees except
when he goes into the library and espies the tail of her skirt
vanishing through the other door.
As for the ordinary recreations of the country house, the guests
could frequent the billiard room, where they were sure to find
Lord Stockheath playing a hundred up with his cousin, Algernon
Wooster--a spectacle of the liveliest interest--or they could, if
fond of golf, console themselves for the absence of links in the
neighborhood with the exhilarating pastime of clock golf; or they
could stroll about the terraces with such of their relations as
they happened to be on speaking terms with at the moment, and
abuse their host and the rest of their relations.
This was the favorite amusement; and after breakfast, on a
morning ten days after Joan and Ashe had formed their compact,
the terraces were full of perambulating couples. Here, Colonel
Horace Mant, walking with the Bishop of Godalming, was soothing
that dignitary by clothing in soldierly words thoughts that the
latter had not been able to crush down, but which his holy office
scarcely permitted him to utter.
There, Lady Mildred Mant, linked to Mrs. Jack Hale, of the
collateral branch of the family, was saying things about her
father in his capacity of host and entertainer, that were making
her companion feel like another woman. Farther on, stopping
occasionally to gesticulate, could be seen other Emsworth
relations and connections. It was a typical scene of quiet,
peaceful English family life.
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