Part 2
Then Mr. Rogers said, "I may have something to say about that, young man." And I will explain that it is possible that old Mr. Rogers--whose house I am moving with my tractor--may have some influence in the matter, owing to the fact that the girl I expect to marry is named Mildred Rogers, and unfortunately happens to be the daughter of old Mr. Rogers.
So you see, I want that gear, and I want it quick. I am sending back the new gear please credit me with the $41.26 I paid on the C.O.D. I am also sending you the old busted gear. Please look over the old busted gear and send me one just like it, only with the six teeth not busted out. Please hurry and remember FORTY-FOUR TEETH, and oblige yours truly,
DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.
P.S. _Not_ 45 teeth.
FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY MAKERS OF EARTHWORM TRACTORS
EARTHWORM CITY, ILL. October 29, 1924
Mr. David Crockett Suggs Dry River Junction, Tex.
Dear Sir: This will acknowledge your valued favor of October 26 in reference to the trouble you are having with your tractor. We regret exceedingly that the misunderstanding in regard to the gear which you need has caused you the annoying delay which you mention.
As soon as your old gear arrives, it will be checked up and every possible effort will be made to supply you promptly with a duplicate of it.
Very truly yours, FREDERICK R. OVERTON, Parts Department.
DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS CONTRACTOR
HOUSES MOVED SAFELY, SPEEDILY AND SURELY
DRY RIVER JUNCTION, TEXAS October 31, 1924
To The Farmers Friend Tractor Company Earthworm City, Illinois
Dear Sir: My new letter paper has come your letter has come please send me the gear as quick as possible. I'm in a hurry more than at any time before and unless I can get this mess straightened out I'll be more of a blowed up sucker than anybody you ever seen, and in order that you may see what a rush I am in and send the gear as quick as possible, I will explain 2 very unfortunate events which has took place since my last letter. The first was last night.
Being Thursday night and my regular night to call, I went around to see Miss Mildred Rogers, who, as I have explained before, I had expected to marry very soon, and who used to live down by the depot, but is now located temporarily on Main Street just in front of Ferguson's Drug Store. It is not as much fun as it used to be to call at the Rogers's house. Formerly it was possible to sit in the hammock on the front porch, and as the house set back from the street and there was trees around and no street lights, a very pleasant evening could be had.
But at present the front porch is located in a most unfortunate way just two feet from the windows of Ferguson's Drug Store, which is all lighted up--you know how drug store windows is--lots of big white lights, and all kinds of jars full of colored water with more lights shining through. And people squeezing past between the porch and the drug store and going in to get ice cream sodas or stopping to crack bum jokes about me, which I will not repeat. So you can see that it would not be any fun for me and Mildred to sit in the hammock in the evening, even if it was possible to sit in the hammock which it is not, owing to the fact that the porch pillar to which the hammock is fastened has become so weakened by the jacking up of the house that it would take very little to pull it over and let the whole porch roof down with a bang.
So we decided that we better sit in the parlor and we had no sooner entered and I was not doing any harm in any way when old Mr. Rogers came in and there was a very painful scene which I wont describe only to say that he used such expressions as "Get to Hell out of here," and "I dont want my daughter keeping company with any moron," which is a word he got out of the Dallas News.
So after he had hollered around and Mildred had cried, I left the house in a dignified manner. Being a gentleman and always respectful to old age, I did not talk back to him, the dirty crook. But you can see why it is I am in a hurry for the gear.
The other unfortunate event was just this A.M., when old man Rogers went out and hired twelve horses from all over town and also one small flivver tractor to move his house up to where he wants it. He tried to get a big tractor, but there is none in town or nearby except mine which is broke down. But there is plenty of horses and there is this little flivver tractor that would not be big enough to pull the house all by itself.
So this morning they wheeled my poor old tractor out of the way, and they hooked up to the house and there was about a hundred people from the town and from round about that was helping with advice and hollering and yelling and telling Mr. Rogers how to do it. And there was I--the only practical and professional house-mover in the whole city--and none of them asked my advice about anything and so it is not my fault what happened.
When they was all ready, Mr. Rogers he stands up and hollers out, "All ready,--Go!" And the six drivers yelled at the twelve horses, and all the people standing around began to cheer and shout. And the feller on the little flivver tractor started up the motor so quick it made a big noise and scared the horses and all the horses began jumping and heaving and they jerked the house sidewise, and some of the timbers slipped, and the kitchen that I told you about,--it give a little lurch and fell off the house. Just let go, and fell off.
So that scared them, and they unhooked the horses and the flivver tractor and didnt try no more moving, and the house is still there all except the kitchen which was busted up so bad that they finished the job and knocked it to pieces and took it away in wheel barrows.
One good thing is that now the traffic can get in between the house and the post office so they dont have to detour any more. But one very unfortunate thing was that Mrs. Rogers happened to be in the kitchen when it fell off being shaken up considerable but not seriously injured so you can see that I got to have the tractor running again so I can move the house and I hope you will send the gear at once yours truly and oblige,
DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.
FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY MAKERS OF EARTHWORM TRACTORS
EARTHWORM CITY, ILL. November 2, 1924
Mr. David Crockett Suggs Dry River Junction, Tex.
Dear Sir: This will acknowledge your valued favor of October 31 requesting that we use all possible haste in sending you a gear which you need to repair your tractor. We are also pleased to report the receipt of one No. 6843 gear which we shipped you on October 14 and which you returned unused owing to the fact that it will not fit your tractor. We are crediting your account with $41.26 C.O.D. which you paid on this shipment.
The broken gear which you sent as a sample has been carefully checked over by our Engineering Department. They report that they have been unable to identify this gear, and they are of the opinion that no gear similar to this has ever been manufactured by this company. We are, therefore, at a loss to understand how this gear ever came to be in your tractor. We do not make gears similar to the one you have sent in, and it will therefore be impossible for us to supply you with one. However, it is always our policy to be of the greatest possible service to Earthworm owners, and we would suggest that the best thing to do in the circumstances would be for one of our service mechanics to inspect your machine.
Fortunately, it happens that Dry River Junction is the nearest railroad point to the Canyon Ranch, which has just purchased a Ten-Ton Earthworm Tractor. Consequently, Mr. Luke Torkle, one of our service men, will be at Dry River Junction in a few days to unload this tractor and drive it overland to the ranch. If you desire, we will have Mr. Torkle stop off and inspect your machine, advising you what steps to take to put it into first-class running condition; or, if this is impossible, to confer with you in regard to turning in your old machine and purchasing one of our new models. Kindly let us know what you wish us to do in this matter.
Very truly yours, FREDERICK R. OVERTON, Parts Department.
TELEGRAM
DRY RIVER JUNC TEX Nov 4 1924
FARMERS FRIEND TRACTOR Co EARTHWORM CY, ILLS
_Have the guy come quick in a hurry._
DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.
FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY
SERVICE MAN'S REPORT
WRITTEN AT: Dry River Junction, Tex. DATE: November 7, 1924 WRITTEN BY: Luke Torkle, Service Man SUBJECT: Tractor belonging to D. C. Suggs
Reached here 7 A.M. Unloaded tractor for Canyon Ranch, and will drive it over to-morrow.
Before I had a chance to look up D.C. Suggs, the mayor and prominent citizens urgently requested me to use the new tractor to move a house that was blocking the main street. This looked like good advertising for us, especially as the county commissioner here is expecting to buy a tractor for road work. Accordingly, I spent the morning moving the house to where they wanted it, and then looked up Mr. Suggs.
Found he has left town. It is reported that he was shot at three times yesterday by a man called Rogers, but escaped. Last night he sold his entire property, consisting of a second-hand tractor, an old fliv, one radio set and the good will in a house-moving business for $450. He then took the train north with a girl called Mildred Rogers of this place.
I inspected the tractor formerly owned by Mr. Suggs. No wonder we couldn't supply him with repairs for it. It is not one of our tractors. It has no name plate, but I was able to identify it as a 1920 Model, Steel Elephant Tractor, made by the S.E. Tractor Company of Indianapolis. I talked on the phone with Mrs. Joseph Banks, whose husband formerly owned the tractor. She says her husband sold the old Earthworm Tractor three years ago to a man in Dallas. Mr. Banks owned four or five different kinds of tractors. Mrs. Banks remembered he had once bought tractor parts from the Farmers' Friend Tractor Company.
In regard to your suggestion that Mr. Suggs might be persuaded to buy a new tractor, I think this is hardly possible. It is reported that before he left, Mr. Suggs stated that he and Miss Rogers would be married and would locate in Chicago. He was uncertain what business he would take up, but said very emphatically it would be nothing in any way connected with house moving, or with tractors or any kind of machinery.
THE CUSTODY OF THE PUMPKIN
_By_ P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. WODEHOUSE
P. G. Wodehouse--the initials stand for Pelham Grenville--is an Englishman who divides his time between England and America and whose audience unites the two countries more effectually than most conscious fraternalizing. He writes short stories and novels with equal success and he, Guy Bolton, and Jerome Kern have been responsible for some of the pleasantest musical shows on Broadway. Wodehouse is a consistent purveyor of light entertainment, but sometimes, in one or two of his novels, he has shown serious emotion touching for a moment some depth of character--to rise, the next, to a surface of sparkle. His touch is usually exquisitely deft and no one alive can make the farcically absurd situation more laughable. And this he manages by restraint and understatement; as golfers say, he never "presses" his stroke.
"The Custody of the Pumpkin," which was first published in the Saturday Evening Post for November 29, 1924, is not only a typical Wodehouse story, but concerns two of the principal characters in Wodehouse's most popular novel, _Leave It to Psmith_. It is an earlier episode in the saga of the amiably boneheaded Earl of Blandings Castle and his heir.
THE CUSTODY OF THE PUMPKIN[1]
[1] Copyright, 1924, by The Curtis Publishing Company.
The pleasant morning sunshine descended like an amber shower bath on Blandings Castle, that stately home of England which so adorns the county of Shropshire, lighting up with a heartening glow its ivied walls, its rolling parks, its gardens, out-houses and messuages and such of its inhabitants as chanced at the moment to be taking the air. It fell on green lawns and wide terraces, on noble trees and bright flower beds. It fell on the baggy trousers seat of Angus McAllister, head gardener to the Earl of Emsworth, as he bent with dour Scottish determination to pluck a coy snail from its reverie beneath the leaf of a lettuce. It fell on the white flannels of the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's second son, hurrying across the water meadows. It also fell on Lord Emsworth himself, for the proprietor of this fair domain was standing on the turret above the west wing, placidly surveying his possessions through a powerful telescope.
The Earl of Emsworth was a fluffy-minded and amiable old gentleman with a fondness for new toys. Although the main interest of his life was his garden, he was always ready to try a side line; and the latest of these side lines was this telescope of his--the outcome of a passion for astronomy which had lasted some two weeks.
For some minutes Lord Emsworth remained gazing with a pleased eye at a cow down in the meadows. It was a fine cow, as cows go, but, like so many cows, it lacked sustained dramatic interest; and his lordship, surfeited after a while by the spectacle of it chewing the cud and staring glassily at nothing, was about to swivel the apparatus round in the hope of picking up something a trifle more sensational, when into the range of his vision there came the Honorable Freddie. White and shining, he tripped along over the turf like a Theocritean shepherd hastening to keep an appointment with a nymph; and for the first time that morning a frown came to mar the serenity of Lord Emsworth's brow. He generally frowned when he saw Freddie, for with the passage of the years that youth had become more and more a problem to an anxious father.
The Earl of Emsworth, like so many of Britain's aristocracy, had but little use for the Younger Son. And Freddie Threepwood was a particularly trying younger son. There seemed, in the opinion of his nearest and dearest, to be no way of coping with the boy. If he was allowed to live in London he piled up debts and got into mischief; and when hauled back home to Blandings he moped broodingly. It was possibly the fact that his demeanor at this moment was so mysteriously jaunty, his bearing so inexplicably free from the crushed misery with which he usually mooned about the place that induced Lord Emsworth to keep a telescopic eye on him. Some inner voice whispered to him that Freddie was up to no good and would bear watching.
The inner voice was absolutely correct. Within thirty seconds its case had been proved up to the hilt. Scarcely had his lordship had time to wish, as he invariably wished on seeing his offspring, that Freddie had been something entirely different in manners, morals, and appearance and had been the son of somebody else living a considerable distance away, when out of a small spinney near the end of the meadow there bounded a girl. And Freddie, after a cautious glance over his shoulder, immediately proceeded to fold this female in a warm embrace.
Lord Emsworth had seen enough. He tottered away from the telescope, a shattered man. One of his favorite dreams was of some nice eligible girl, belonging to a good family and possessing a bit of money of her own, coming along some day and taking Freddie off his hands; but that inner voice, more confident now than ever, told him that this was not she. Freddie would not sneak off in this furtive fashion to meet eligible girls; nor could he imagine any eligible girl in her right senses rushing into Freddie's arms in that enthusiastic way. No, there was only one explanation. In the cloistral seclusion of Blandings, far from the metropolis with all its conveniences for that sort of thing, Freddie had managed to get himself entangled. Seething with anguish and fury, Lord Emsworth hurried down the stairs and out onto the terrace. Here he prowled like an elderly leopard waiting for feeding time, until in due season there was a flicker of white among the trees that flanked the drive and a cheerful whistling announced the culprit's approach.
It was with a sour and hostile eye that Lord Emsworth watched his son draw near. He adjusted his pince-nez, and with their assistance was able to perceive that a fatuous smile of self-satisfaction illuminated the young man's face, giving him the appearance of a beaming sheep. In the young man's buttonhole there shone a nosegay of simple meadow flowers, which, as he walked, he patted from time to time with a loving hand.
"Frederick!" bellowed his lordship.
The villain of the piece halted abruptly. Sunk in a roseate trance, he had not observed his father. But such was the sunniness of his mood that even this encounter could not damp him. He gamboled happily up.
"Hullo, guv'nor," said Freddie. He searched in his mind for a pleasant topic of conversation, always a matter of some little difficulty on these occasions. "Lovely day, what?"
His lordship was not to be diverted into a discussion of the weather. He drew a step nearer, looking like the man who smothered the young princes in the Tower.
"Frederick," he demanded, "who was that girl?"
The Honorable Freddie started convulsively. He appeared to be swallowing with difficulty something large and jagged.
"Girl?" he quavered. "Girl? Girl, guv'nor?"
"That girl I saw you kissing ten minutes ago down in the water meadows."
"Oh!" said the Honorable Freddie. He paused. "Oh, ah!" He paused again. "Oh, ah, yes! I've been meaning to tell you about that, guv'nor."
"You have, have you?"
"All perfectly correct, you know. Oh yes, indeed! All most absolutely correct-o! Nothing fishy, I mean to say, or anything like that. She's my _fiancée_."
A sharp howl escaped Lord Emsworth, as if one of the bees humming in the lavender beds had taken time off to sting him in the neck.
"Who is she?" he boomed. "Who is this woman?"
"Her name's Donaldson."
"Who is she?"
"Aggie Donaldson. Aggie's short for Niagara. Her people spent their honeymoon at the Falls, she tells me. She's American, and all that. Rummy names they give kids in America," proceeded Freddie with hollow chattiness. "I mean to say! Niagara! I ask you!"
"Who is she?"
"She's most awfully bright, you know. Full of beans. You'll love her."
"Who is she?"
"And can play the saxophone."
"Who," demanded Lord Emsworth for the sixth time, "is she? And where did you meet her?"
Freddie coughed. The information, he perceived, could no longer be withheld, and he was keenly alive to the fact that it scarcely fell into the class of tidings of great joy.
"Well, as a matter of fact, guv'nor, she's a sort of cousin of Angus McAllister's. She's come over to England for a visit, don't you know, and is staying with the old boy. That's how I happened to run across her."
Lord Emsworth's eyes bulged and he gargled faintly. He had had many unpleasant visions of his son's future, but they had never included one of him walking down the aisle with a sort of cousin of his head gardener.
"Oh!" he said. "Oh, indeed?"
Lord Emsworth threw his arms up as if calling on Heaven to witness a good man's persecution, and shot off along the terrace at a rapid trot. Having ranged the grounds for some minutes, he ran his quarry to earth at the entrance of the yew alley.
The head gardener turned at the sound of his footsteps. He was a sturdy man of medium height with eyebrows that would have fitted better a bigger forehead. These, added to a red and wiry beard, gave him a formidable and uncompromising expression. Honesty Angus McAllister's face had in full measure, and also intelligence; but it was a bit short on sweetness and light.
"McAllister," said his lordship, plunging without preamble into the matter of his discourse. "That girl. You must send her away." A look of bewilderment clouded such of Mr. McAllister's features as were not concealed behind his beard and eyebrows.
"Gurrul?"
"That girl who is staying with you. She must go!"
"Gae where?"
Lord Emsworth was not in the mood to be finicky about details.
"Anywhere," he said. "I won't have her here a day longer."
"Why?" inquired Mr. McAllister, who liked to thresh these things out.
"Never mind why. You must send her away immediately."
Mr. McAllister mentioned an insuperable objection.
"She's payin' me twa poon' a week," he said simply.
Lord Emsworth did not grind his teeth, for he was not given to that form of displaying emotion; but he leaped some ten inches into the air and dropped his pince-nez. And, though normally a fair-minded and reasonable man, well aware that modern earls must think twice before pulling the feudal stuff on their employees, he took on the forthright truculence of a large landowner of the early Norman period ticking off a serf.
"Listen, McAllister! Listen to me! Either you send that girl away today or you can go yourself."
A curious expression came into Angus McAllister's face--always excepting the occupied territories. It was the look of a man who has not forgotten Bannockburn, a man conscious of belonging to the country of William Wallace and Robert Bruce. He made Scotch noises at the back of his throat.
"Y'r lorrudsheep will accept ma notis," he said with formal dignity.
"I'll pay you a month's wages in lieu of notice and you will leave this afternoon," retorted Lord Emsworth with spirit.
"Mphm!" said Mr. McAllister.
Lord Emsworth left the battlefield with a feeling of pure exhilaration, still in the grip of the animal fury of conflict. No twinge of remorse did he feel at the thought that Angus McAllister had served him faithfully for ten years. Nor did it cross his mind that he might miss McAllister.
But that night, as he sat smoking his after-dinner cigarette, Reason, so violently expelled, came stealing timidly back to her throne, and a cold hand seemed suddenly placed upon his heart.
With Angus McAllister gone, how would the pumpkin fare?
The importance of this pumpkin in the Earl of Emsworth's life requires, perhaps, a word of explanation. Every ancient family in England has some little gap in its scroll of honor, and that of Lord Emsworth was no exception. For generations back his ancestors had been doing notable deeds; they had sent out from Blandings Castle statesmen and warriors, governors and leaders of the people; but they had not--in the opinion of the present holder of the title--achieved a full hand. However splendid the family record might appear at first sight, the fact remained that no Earl of Emsworth had ever won a first prize for pumpkins at the Shrewsbury Flower and Vegetable Show. For roses, yes. For tulips, true. For spring onions, granted. But not for pumpkins; and Lord Emsworth, who lived for his garden, felt it deeply.
For many a summer past he had been striving indefatigably to remove this blot on the family escutcheon, only to see his hopes go tumbling down. But this year at last victory had seemed in sight, for there had been vouchsafed to Blandings a competitor of such amazing parts that his lordship, who had watched it grow practically from a pip, could not envisage failure. Surely, he told himself as he gazed on its golden roundness, even Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Badgwick Hall, winner for three successive years, would never be able to produce anything to challenge this superb vegetable.
And it was this supreme pumpkin whose welfare he feared he had jeopardized by dismissing Angus McAllister. For Angus was its official trainer. He understood the pumpkin. Indeed, in his reserved Scottish way he even seemed to love it. With Angus gone, what would the harvest be?