2.8 The Minkey returns to the Potting Shed in high dudgeon

While Alcock is mulling over the latest letter, there’s a quiet knock on the shed door. It is the Minkey who apparently cannot work at the Swan Hotel any more! Although, he concedes, the Barman is a reasonable employer, his customers are not. 

Under Alcock’s gentle questioning, the Minkey agrees that he has nothing against the quiet Popty Ping. Young Stanli is very polite. Bill the field-frog keeps out of his way. Grenooyuh is actually quite friendly although, obviously, ‘too French’. It is only Froggie who is the problem.

In fact, the Minkey is not completely clear about how Froggie is being unpleasant because Froggie speaks in the strange dialect of all Green British Pond Frogs, which they insist is the Queen’s English (or ‘Kwin’s Orn Indlish’, as they say). Alcock wonders to himself whether this may all be a bit of a misunderstanding.

He calls together the ‘4Cs’ and after a conversation they hatch a plan. 

Although the Minkey is welcome to join the Potting Shed, will he go back to the pub, for just a short while, and try to find out who might be plotting against the Barman? “Be our Miss Climpson” suggests pTravis, unhelpfully. The plotter will not be anyone actually in the pub, of course, because they stand to lose if the Barman loses his licence, but being in the pub might reveal clues that no one at the Potting Shed would know. 

A little reluctantly, the Minkey agrees, though wondering who on Earth ‘Miss Climpson’ is, and climbs wearily back up the hill to the Swan Hotel.