“Still, I shall have plenty of flowers to show you when you are at Blandings. I expect,” said Lord Emsworth, at last showing a host-like disposition to give his guest a belated innings, “I expect you’ll write one of your poems about my gardens, eh?”
Psmith was conscious of a feeling of distinct gratification. Weeks of toil among the herrings of Billingsgate had left him with a sort of haunting fear that even in private life there clung to him the miasma of the fish market. Yet here was a perfectly unprejudiced observer looking squarely at him and mistaking him for a poet—showing that in spite of all he had gone through there must still be something notably spiritual and unfishy about his outward appearance.
“Very possibly,” he said. “Very possibly.”
“I suppose you get ideas for your poetry from all sorts of things,” said Lord Emsworth, nobly resisting the temptation to collar the conversation again. He was feeling extremely friendly towards this poet fellow. It was deuced civil of him not to be put out and huffy at being left alone in the smoking-room.
“From practically everything,” said Psmith, “except fish.”
“Fish?”
“I have never written a poem about fish.”
“No?” said Lord Emsworth, again feeling that a pin had worked loose in the machinery of the conversation.
“I was once offered a princely sum,” went on Psmith, now floating happily along on the tide of his native exuberance, “to write a ballad for the Fishmonger’s Gazette entitled, ‘Herbert the Turbot.’ But I was firm. I declined.”
“Indeed?” said Lord Emsworth.