Love Among the Chickens | Page 4

giant portmanteau
from a corner of the room and flinging it open, "care of the Dalai Lama,
No. 3 Younghusband Terrace, Tibet."

"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Medley placidly.
"I'll write you my address to-night. I don't know where I'm going yet. Is
that an A. B. C. over there? Good. Give my love to that bright young
spirit on the top floor, and tell him that I hope my not being here to
listen won't interfere in any way with his morning popular concerts."
"Yes, sir."
"And, Mrs. Medley, if a man named ----"
Mrs. Medley had drifted silently away. During his last speech a
thunderous knocking had begun on the front door.
Jerry Garnet stood and listened, transfixed. Something seemed to tell
him who was at the business end of that knocker.
He heard Mrs. Medley's footsteps pass along the hall and pause at the
door. Then there was the click of the latch. Then a volume of sound
rushed up to him where he stood over his empty portmanteau.
"Is Mr. Garnet in?"
Mrs. Medley's reply was inaudible, but apparently in the affirmative.
"Where is he?" boomed the voice. "Show me the old horse. First floor.
Thank you. Where is the man of wrath?"
There followed a crashing on the stairs such as even the young
gentleman of the top floor had been unable to produce in his nocturnal
rovings. The house shook.
And with the tramping came the thunderous voice, as the visitor once
more gave tongue.
"Garnet! GARNET!! GARNET!!!"

UKRIDGE'S SCHEME
II
Mr. Stanley Featherstonhaugh Ukridge dashed into the room, uttering a
roar of welcome as he caught sight of Garnet, still standing petrified
athwart his portmanteau.
"My dear old man," he shouted, springing at him and seizing his hand
in a clutch that effectually woke Garnet from his stupor. "How are you,
old chap? This is good. By Jove, this is good! This is fine, what?"
He dashed back to the door and looked out.
"Come on, Millie," he shouted.
Garnet was wondering who in the name of fortune Millie could
possibly be, when there appeared on the further side of Mr. Ukridge the
figure of a young woman. She paused in the doorway, and smiled
pleasantly.
"Garnet, old horse," said Ukridge with some pride, "let me introduce
you to my wife. Millie, this is old Garnet. You've heard me talk about
him."
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Ukridge.
Garnet bowed awkwardly. The idea of Ukridge married was something
too overpowering to be assimilated on the instant. If ever there was a
man designed by nature to be a bachelor, Stanley Ukridge was that man.
Garnet could feel that he himself was not looking his best. He knew in
a vague, impersonal way that his eyebrows were still somewhere in the
middle of his forehead, whither they had sprung in the first moment of
surprise, and that his jaw, which had dropped, had not yet resumed its
normal posture. Before committing himself to speech he made a
determined effort to revise his facial expression.
"Buck up, old horse," said Ukridge. He had a painful habit of

addressing all and sundry by that title. In his school-master days he had
made use of it while interviewing the parents of new pupils, and the
latter had gone away, as a rule, with a feeling that this must be either
the easy manner of genius or spirits, and hoping for the best. Later, he
had used it to perfect strangers in the streets. On one occasion he had
been heard to address a bishop by that title.
"Surprised to find me married, what? Garny, old boy"--sinking his
voice to what was intended to be a whisper--"take my tip. You go and
do the same. You feel another man. Give up this bachelor business. It's
a mug's game. Go and get married, my boy, go and get married. By gad,
I've forgotten to pay the cabby. Half a moment."
He was out of the door and on his way downstairs before the echoes of
his last remark had ceased to shake the window of the sitting room.
Garnet was left to entertain Mrs. Ukridge.
So far her share in the conversation had been small. Nobody talked
very much when Ukridge was on the scene. She sat on the edge of
Garnet's big basket chair, looking very small and quiet. She smiled
pleasantly, as she had done during the whole of the preceding dialogue.
It was apparently her chief form of expression.
Jerry Garnet felt very friendly toward her. He could not help pitying her.
Ukridge, he thought, was a very good person to know casually, but a
little of him, as his former headmaster had once said in a moody,
reflective voice, went a very long way. To be bound to him for