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He had the air of one who intends to get used to his surroundings before trusting himself to speech. "The water is delightfully warm," I said. "Oh, it's you!" said the professor; and I could not cheat myself into the belief that he spoke cordially. Ukridge snorted loudly in the offing.
It's the idea of a lifetime. Now listen to me for a moment. You get your hen " "One hen?" "Call it one for the sake of argument. It makes my calculations clearer. Very well, then. Harriet the hen you get her. Do you follow me so far?" "Yes. You get a hen." "I told you Garnet was a dashed bright fellow," said Ukridge approvingly to his attentive wife.
Ukridge calling his attention to the fact that his account has been allowed to mount to a considerable figure, and having received no satisfactory reply, desired me to visit him. I am sorry that he is not at home." "So am I," I said with feeling. "Do you expect him to return shortly?" "No," I said, "I do not." He was looking curiously at the expectant band of duns. I forestalled his question.
The dark moments of optimistic minds are sacred, and I would no more have ventured to break in on Ukridge's thoughts at that moment than, if I had been a general in the Grand Army, I would have opened conversation with Napoleon during the retreat from Moscow. I was withdrawing as softly as I could, when my foot grated on the shingle. Ukridge turned. "Hullo, Garny." "Hullo, old man."
I had only heard casual mention of this relative hitherto, but I had built up a mental picture of her partly from remarks which Ukridge had let fall, but principally from the fact that he had named the most malignant hen in our fowl-run after her. A severe lady, I imagined with a cold eye. "Wish she'd enclose a cheque," said Ukridge. "She could spare it.
Ukridge indoors when he did, and Beale was hanging on his words with a look in his eyes which I had never seen there before, a look of reverence, almost of awe, the look of a disciple who listens to a master. He poured scorn upon his hearers, and they quailed. He flung invective at them, and they wilted.
By these statesmanlike methods he had certainly made the place very comfortable. I suppose we all realised that the things would have to be paid for some day, but the thought did not worry us. "Pay?" bellowed Ukridge on the only occasion when I ventured to bring up the unpleasant topic, "of course we shall pay. Why not? I don't like to see this faint-hearted spirit in you, old horse.
I will not be treated like a child. I am as competent to discuss the affairs of Ireland without heat as any man, let me tell you." "Father " "And let me tell you, Mr. Ukridge, that I consider your opinions poisonous. Poisonous, sir. And you know nothing whatever about the subject, sir. Every word you say betrays your profound ignorance. I don't wish to see you or to speak to you again.
Little accidents marred the harmony of life in the fowl-run. On one occasion a hen not Aunt Elizabeth, I am sorry to say, fell into a pot of tar, and came out an unspeakable object. Ukridge put his spare pair of tennis shoes in the incubator to dry them, and permanently spoiled the future of half-a-dozen eggs which happened to have got there first.
Beale must have fallen out with the young man who was sitting on the grass and smitten him; and now his friend had taken up the quarrel. "Now this," I said to myself, "is rather interesting. Here, in this one farm, we have the only three known methods of dealing with duns. Beale is evidently an exponent of the violent method. Ukridge is an apostle of Evasion. I shall try Conciliation.
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