A PELICAN AT BLANDINGS

A Blandings novel Midsummer at the Threepwood country seat, a whole world and its pigsty is at peace. And then crisis, wearing a variety of habits, saunters in to Castle Blandings and upsets the hard-won applecart of the peace-loving thirteenth Earl. Lady Constant nee Threepwood, formerly Keeble, now Schoonmaker, arrives unheralded from New York. Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, follows soon after and settles in the Garden Suite with no forseeable indication of quitting.

Before he knows where he is Beach the Butler has a house party on his hands and Lord Emsworth has made the short journey to the end of his wits - a route hedged about with alarming symptoms in the pigsty, the sinister presence of an unaccredited American, and evidence that Blandings is to be the site of manifest sharp practice in the sale of a startling modern portrait of a nude (mistaken by Lord Emsworth for a pig). It is a situation which calls for a stouter heart and a stronger hand. Galahad Threepwood is listening to a godson's tale of stricken love for a niece of the Duke of Dunstable when the call comes.The last of the Pelicans, that unparalleled cadre of the young in heart and the fleet of foot of yesteryear, is on his way at once.