WODEHOUSE THE LITTLE NUGGET NY PUBLIC LIBRARY THE BRANCH LIBRARIES 3 3333 11794 7081 I 1 Lr W Wodehouse, P. G. The 1 ittle nugget / 874858 TheNe Public Aator, Lenox and 1 Penguin Books The Little Nugget P. G. Wodehouse was born in Guildford in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. After working for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank for two years, he left to earn his living as a journalist and storywriter, writing the 'By the Way* column in the old Globe. He also contributed a series of school stories to a magazine for boys, the Captain, in one of which Psmith made his first appearance. Going to America before the First World War, he sold a serial to the Saturday Evening Post and for the next twenty-five years almost all his books appeared first in this magazine. He was part author and writer of the lyrics of eighteen musical comedies including Kissing Time; he married in 1914 and in 1955 took American citizenship. He wrote over ninety books and his work has won world-wide acclaim, being translated into many languages. The Times hailed him as 'a comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce'. P. G. Wodehouse said, *I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn . .' He was created a Knight of the British Empire in the New Year's Honours List in 1975. In a BBC interview he said that he had no ambitions left, now that he had been knighted and there was a waxwork of him in Madame Tussaud's. He died on St Valentine's Day in 1975 at the age of ninety-three. P. G. WODEHOUSE IN PENGUIN Life at Blandings Something Fresh Summer Lightning Heavy Weather Uncle Fred in the Springtime Full Moon Pigs Have Wings Service with a Smile Galahad at Blandings A Pelican at Blandings Sunset at Blandings and the omnibus editions Life at Blandings Imperial Blandings Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best Short Stories The Pothunters and Other Stories The Gold Bat and Other Stories The Man Upstairs and Other Stories The Man with Two Left Feet Blandings Castle Lord Emsworth and Others Eggs, Beans and Crumpets The Mike and Psmith Books Mike at Wrykyn Mike and Psmith Psmith in the City Psmith, Journalist Leave it to Psmith and the omnibus The World of Psmith and The Little Nugget Piccadilly Jim Uneasy Money A Damsel in Distress A Gentleman of Leisure The Indiscretions of Archie The Adventures of Sally Ukridge Sam the Sudden The Small Bachelor Money for Nothing If I Were You Big Money Laughing Gas Doctor Sally Hot Water The Luck of the Bodkins Young Men in Spats Summer Moonshine Quick Service Money in the Bank Uncle Dynamite French Leave Cocktail Time Company for Henry Do Butlers Burgle Banks? The Girl in Blue Spring Fever Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin Bachelors Anonymous Uncle Fred: An Omnibus also published Wodehouse on Wodehouse Yours, Plum P. G. Wodehouse The Little Nugget Penguin Books PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published by Methuen 1913 Published in Penguin Books 1959 10 9 Copyright 1913 by P. G. Wodehouse All rights reserved Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic Set in Intertype Times Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Part One In which the Little Nugget is introduced to the reader, and plans are made for his future by several interested parties. In which, also, the future Mr Peter Burns is touched upon. The whole concluding with a momentous telephone-call The Little Nugget If the management of the Hotel Guelph, that London land- mark, could have been present at three o'clock one afternoon in early January in the sitting-room of the suite which they had assigned to Mrs Elmer Ford, late of New York, they might well have felt a little aggrieved. Philosophers among them would possibly have meditated on the limitations of human effort; for they had done their best for Mrs Ford. They had housed her well. They had fed her well. They had caused inspired servants to anticipate her every need. Yet here she was, in the midst of all these aids to a contented mind, exhibiting a restlessness and impatience of her surroundings that would have been no- ticeable in a caged tigress or a prisoner of the Bastille. She paced the room. She sat down, picked up a novel, dropped it, and, rising, resumed her patrol. The clock striking, she com- pared it with her watch, which she had consulted two minutes before. She opened the locket that hung by a gold chain from her neck, looked at its contents, and sighed. Finally, going quickly into the bedroom, she took from a suit-case a framed oil-painting, and returning with it to the sitting-room, placed it on a chair, and stepped back, gazing at it hungrily. Her large brown eyes, normally hard and imperious, were strangely softened. Her mouth quivered. 'Ogden!' she whispered. The picture which had inspired this exhibition of feeling would probably not have affected the casual spectator to quite the same degree. He would have seen merely a very faulty and amateurish portrait of a singularly repellent little boy of about eleven, who stared out from the canvas with an expression half stolid, half querulous; a bulgy, overfed little boy; a little boy who looked exactly what he was, the spoiled child of parents 7 who had far more money than was good for them. As Mrs Ford gazed at the picture, and the picture stared back at her, the telephone bell rang. She ran to it eagerly. It was the office of the hotel, announcing a caller. 'Yes? Yes? Who?' Her voice fell, as if the name was not the one she had expected. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'Yes, ask Lord Moun- try to come to me here, please.' She returned to the portrait. The look of impatience, which had left her face as the bell sounded, was back now. She sup- pressed it with an effort as her visitor entered. Lord Mountry was a blond, pink-faced, fair-moustached - young man of about twenty-eight a thick-set, solemn young man. He winced as he caught sight of the picture, which fixed him with a stony eye immediately on his entry, and quickly looked away. 'I say, it's all right, Mrs Ford.' He was of the type which wastes no time on preliminary greetings. 'I've got him.' 'Got him!' Mrs Ford's voice was startled. 'Stanborough, you know.' 'Oh! I - I was thinking of something else. Won't you sit down?' Lord Mountry sat down. 'The artist, you know. You remember you said at lunch the other day you wanted your little boy's portrait painted, as you - ' only had one of him, aged eleven This is Ogden, Lord Mountry. I painted this myself.' His lordship, who had selected a chair that enabled him to present a shoulder to the painting, and was wearing a slightly dogged look suggestive of one who 'turns no more his head, because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread', forced himself round, and met his gaze with as much non- chalance as he could summon up. 4 Er, yes,' he said. He paused. 'Fine manly little fellow - what?' he continued. Yes, isn't he?' His lordship stealthily resumed his former position. 8 *I recommended this fellow, Stanborough, if you remember. He's a great pal of mine, and I'd like to give him a leg up if I could. They tell me he's a topping artist. Don't know much about it myself. You told me to bring him round here this afternoon, you remember, to talk things over. He's waiting downstairs.' 'Oh yes, yes. Of course, I've not forgotten. Thank you so much, Lord Mountry.' 'Rather a good scheme occurred to me, that is, if you haven't thought over the idea of that trip on my yacht and decided it would bore you to death. You still feel like making one of the - party what?' Mrs Ford shot a swift glance at the clock. T'm looking forward to it,' she said. 'Well, then, why shouldn't we kill two birds with one stone? Combine the voyage and the portrait, don't you know. You - - could bring your little boy along he'd love the trip and I'd - 7 bring Stanborough W hat?' This offer was not the outcome of a sudden spasm of warm- heartedness on his lordship's part. He had pondered the matter deeply, and had come to the conclusion that, though it had flaws, it was the best plan.