I attached myself to the handle as directed.  Ukridge gave the word.  We had a momentary vision of an excited dog of the mongrel class framed in the open doorway, all eyes and teeth; then the passage was occupied by a spreading pool, and indignant barks from the distance told that the enemy was thinking the thing over in some safe retreat.

“Settled his hash,” said Ukridge complacently.  “Nothing like resource, Garny my boy.  Some men would have gone on letting a good door be ruined.”

“And spoiled the dog for a ha’porth of water,” I said.

At this moment Mrs. Ukridge announced that the kettle was boiling.  Over a cup of tea Ukridge became the man of business.

“I wonder when those fowls are going to arrive.  They should have been here to-day.  It’s a little hard.  Here am I, all eagerness and anxiety, waiting to start an up-to-date chicken farm, and no fowls!  I can’t run a chicken farm without fowls.  If they don’t come to-morrow, I shall get after those people with a hatchet.  There must be no slackness.  They must bustle about.  After tea I’ll show you the garden, and we’ll choose a place for a fowl-run.  To-morrow we must buckle to.  Serious work will begin immediately after breakfast.”

“Suppose,” I said, “the fowls arrive before we’re ready for them?”

“Why, then they must wait.”

“But you can’t keep fowls cooped up indefinitely in a crate.”

“Oh, that’ll be all right.  There’s a basement to this house.  We’ll let ’em run about there till we’re ready for them.  There’s always a way of doing things if you look for it.  Organisation, my boy.  That’s the watchword.  Quiet efficiency.”

“I hope you are going to let the hens hatch some of the eggs, dear,” said Mrs. Ukridge.  “I should love to have some little chickens.”

“Of course.  By all means.  My idea,” said Ukridge, “was this.  These people will send us fifty fowls of sorts.  That means—­call it forty-five eggs a day.  Let ’em . . .  Well, I’m hanged!  There’s that dog again.  Where’s the jug?”

But this time an unforeseen interruption prevented the manoeuvre being the success it had been before.  I had turned the handle and was about to pull the door open, while Ukridge, looking like some modern and dilapidated version of the Discobolus, stood beside me with his jug poised, when a voice spoke from the window.

“Stand still!” said the voice, “or I’ll corpse you!”

I dropped the handle.  Ukridge dropped the jug.  Mrs. Ukridge dropped her tea-cup.  At the window, with a double-barrelled gun in his hands, stood a short, square, red-headed man.  The muzzle of his gun, which rested on the sill, was pointing in a straight line at the third button of my waistcoat.

Ukridge emitted a roar like that of a hungry lion.

“Beale!  You scoundrelly, unprincipled, demon!  What the devil are you doing with that gun?  Why were you out?  What have you been doing?  Why did you shout like that?  Look what you’ve made me do.”