so constituted that no man or thing really had the power to
trouble him deeply; but Freddie had come nearer to doing it than
anybody else in the world. There had been a consistency, a
perseverance, about his irritating performances that had acted on
the placid peer as dripping water on a stone. Isolated acts of
annoyance would have been powerless to ruffle his calm; but
Freddie had been exploding bombs under his nose since he went to
Eton.

He had been expelled from Eton for breaking out at night and
roaming the streets of Windsor in a false mustache. He had been
sent down from Oxford for pouring ink from a second-story window
on the junior dean of his college. He had spent two years at an
expensive London crammer's and failed to pass into the army. He
had also accumulated an almost record series of racing debts,
besides as shady a gang of friends--for the most part vaguely
connected with the turf--as any young man of his age ever
contrived to collect.

These things try the most placid of parents; and finally Lord
Emsworth had put his foot down. It was the only occasion in his
life when he had acted with decision, and he did it with the
accumulated energy of years. He stopped his son's allowance,
haled him home to Blandings Castle, and kept him there so
relentlessly that until the previous night, when they had come up
together by an afternoon train, Freddie had not seen London for
nearly a year.

Possibly it was the reflection that, whatever his secret
troubles, he was at any rate once more in his beloved metropolis