Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Evidently not one of the family beauties

The first shot broke a window and whistled out into the night. The second shot hit the dinner-gong and made a perfectly extrordinary noise like the Last trump. The third, fourth and fifth shots embedded themselves in the wall. The sixth and final shot hit a life-size picture of his lordship's maternal grandmother in the face and improved it out of all knowledge. One thinks no worse of Lord Emsworth's maternal grandmother because she looked like George Robey, and had allowed herself to be painted, after the heavy Classical manner of some of the portraits of a hundred years ago, in the character of Venus (suitably draped, of course) rising from the sea; but it was beyond the possibility of denial that her grandson's bullet permanently removed one of Blandings Castle's most prominent eyesores.

(from Something Fresh, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)

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