[4] Lord Emsworth, enjoying the views around his castle with a telescope on the turret above the west wing, spies his younger son Freddie Threepwood kissing a girl in a spinney by the end of the water-meadow.

Enraged, he confronts the young man, who reveals the girl is named Aggie, and is a "sort of cousin" of Head Gardener Angus McAllister.

A police officer and crowd gather round, and Emsworth attempts to defend himself, but nobody believes a genuine Earl would dress so scruffily.

"Custody of the Pumpkin" was published in The Saturday Evening Post on 29 November 1924, with illustrations by May Wilson Preston.

[12] The story was adapted for television by the BBC as the second episode of the first series of The World of Wodehouse in 1967, under the title "The Great Pumpkin Crisis".