for Dunstable. Bosham locks Fred in a cupboard. Valerie arrives, reunited with Horace and hot for vengeance on the uncle that made him think himself insane, and confirms Fred's identity; Fred convinces all that Emsworth has become infatuated with Polly, and that he is there to put a stop to it. He takes Dunstable's roll of cash under the pretext of paying Polly off—insisting that his visit remain a secret from Lady Ickenham to maintain the family dignity—and heads back to London with not only the money for Gilpin's soup bar, but an extra fifty quid for himself to blow on a few joyous weeks in the city. Characters Lord Emsworth, absent-minded master of Blandings Castle George Threepwood, Lord Bosham, Emsworth's eldest son Lady Constance Keeble, Emsworth's domineering sister Empress of Blandings, Emsworth's cherished prize pig Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, a cantankerous peer Rupert Baxter, Dunstable's secretary, formerly employed by Lord Emsworth Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, Dunstable's nephew Ricky Gilpin, another nephew of Dunstable, a poet Polly Pott, Ricky's fiancée and Horace's dance-teacher Claude "Mustard" Pott, Polly's father, a detective Pongo Twistleton, an impoverished friend of Horace Valerie Twistleton, Pongo's sister, engaged to Horace Frederick Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham, Pongo and Valerie's Uncle Fred Sir Roderick Glossop, a prominent nerve-specialist Beach, butler at the castle Style According to Robert A. Hall Jr., the proportion of dialogue to narrative prose increased in Wodehouse's work over time, beginning in the 1920s, after he had started his intensive involvement with the theatre. In Wodehouse's 1904 novel The Gold Bat, the first six chapters (over 10,000 words) contain 42 percent dialogue and 58 percent narrative, whereas in Uncle Fred in the Springtime, which Hall considered representative of Wodehouse's mature humour, the first three chapters (also over 10,000 words) contain 67 percent dialogue and only 33 percent narrative. In Wodehouse's mature style, longer narrative passages usually set the stage for conversational exchanges, while shorter narrative passages often describe actions which, in a theatrical performance, would be directly visible to the audience. However, Wodehouse also uses these narrative passages to make more detailed humorous comments about the dialogue and characters than would be possible in a play when staged. Wodehouse generally uses conservative verbal inflection in his narrative prose and dialogue, but occasionally contrasts this with an informal verbal inflection in conversation, such as when Lord Bosham and Lady Constance discuss the Duke of Dunstable's accident in