The Little Nugget

The Little Nugget

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Title: The Little Nugget
Author: P.G. Wodehouse
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THE LITTLE NUGGET

By P. G. Wodehouse

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

I
If the management of the Hotel Guelph, that London landmark, 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 noticeable 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 compared 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 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 Mountry 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 suppressed 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