effect on my novel that was to be.  I had designed it as a light comedy effort.  Here and there a page or two to steady the reader and show him what I could do in the way of pathos if I cared to try; but in the main a thing of sunshine and laughter.  But now great slabs of gloom began to work themselves into the scheme of it.  A magnificent despondency became its keynote.  It would not do.  I felt that I must make a resolute effort to shake off my depression.  More than ever the need of conciliating the professor was borne in upon me.  Day and night I spurred my brain to think of some suitable means of engineering a reconciliation.

In the meantime I worked hard among the fowls, drove furiously on the links, and swam about the harbour when the affairs of the farm did not require my attention.

Things were not going well on our model chicken farm.  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.  Chickens kept straying into the wrong coops, where they got badly pecked by the residents.  Edwin slew a couple of Wyandottes, and was only saved from execution by the tears of Mrs. Ukridge.

In spite of these occurrences, however, his buoyant optimism never deserted Ukridge.

“After all,” he said, “What’s one bird more or less?  Yes, I know I made a fuss when that beast of a cat lunched off those two, but that was simply the principle of the thing.  I’m not going to pay large sums for chickens purely in order that a cat which I’ve never liked can lunch well.  Still, we’ve plenty left, and the eggs are coming in better now, though we’ve still a deal of leeway to make up yet in that line.  I got a letter from Whiteley’s this morning asking when my first consignment was going to arrive.  You know, these people make a mistake in hurrying a man.  It annoys him.  It irritates him.  When we really get going, Garny, my boy, I shall drop Whiteley’s.  I shall cut them out of my list and send my eggs to their trade rivals.  They shall have a sharp lesson.  It’s a little hard.  Here am I, worked to death looking after things down here, and these men have the impertinence to bother me about their wretched business.  Come in and have a drink, laddie, and let’s talk it over.”

It was on the morning after this that I heard him calling me in a voice in which I detected agitation.  I was strolling about the paddock, as was my habit after breakfast, thinking about Phyllis and trying to get my novel into shape.  I had just framed a more than usually murky scene for use in the earlier part of the book, when Ukridge shouted to me from the fowl-run.

“Garny, come here.  I want you to see the most astounding thing.”