Love Among the Chickens | Page 7

witness her
growing bewilderment during the weeks that followed, as the working
of Ukridge's giant mind was unfolded to her little by little. Life, as
Ukridge understood the word, must have struck her as a shade too full
of incident to be really comfortable. Garnet was wont to console
himself by the hope that her very genuine love for her husband, and his
equally genuine love for her, was sufficient to smooth out the rough
places of life.
As he returned to his room, after showing his visitors to the door, the
young man upstairs, who had apparently just finished breakfast, burst
once more into song:
"We'll never come back no more, boys, We'll never come back no
more."
Garnet could hear him wedding appropriate dance to the music.
"Not for a few weeks, at any rate," he said to himself, as he started his
packing at the point where he had left off.

A GIRL WITH BROWN HAIR
III
Waterloo station is one of the things which no fellow can understand.
Thousands come to it, thousands go from it. Porters grow gray-headed
beneath its roof. Buns, once fresh and tender, become hard and
misanthropic in its refreshment rooms, and look as if they had seen the

littleness of existence and were disillusioned. But there the station
stands, year after year, wrapped in a discreet gloom, always the same,
always baffling and inscrutable. Not even the porters understand it. "I
couldn't say, sir," is the civil but unsatisfying reply with which research
is met. Now and then one, more gifted than his colleagues, will inform
the traveler that his train starts from "No. 3 or No. 7," but a moment's
reflection and he hedges with No. 12.
Waterloo is the home of imperfect knowledge. The booking clerks
cannot state in a few words where tickets may be bought for any station.
They are only certain that they themselves cannot sell them.
* * * * *
The gloom of the station was lightened on the following morning at ten
minutes to eleven when Mr. Garnet arrived to catch the train to
Axminster, by several gleams of sunshine and a great deal of bustle and
movement on the various platforms. A cheery activity pervaded the
place. Porters on every hand were giving their celebrated imitations of
the car of Juggernaut, throwing as a sop to the wounded a crisp "by
your leave." Agitated ladies were pouring forth questions with the
rapidity of machine guns. Long queues surged at the mouths of the
booking offices, inside which soured clerks, sending lost sheep empty
away, were learning once more their lesson of the innate folly of
mankind. Other crowds collected at the bookstalls, and the bookstall
keeper was eying with dislike men who were under the impression that
they were in a free library.
An optimistic porter had relieved Garnet of his portmanteau and golf
clubs as he stepped out of his cab, and had arranged to meet him on No.
6 platform, from which, he asserted, with the quiet confidence which
has made Englishmen what they are, the eleven-twenty would start on
its journey to Axminster. Unless, he added, it went from No. 4.
Garnet, having bought a ticket, after drawing blank at two booking
offices, made his way to the bookstall. Here he inquired, in a loud,
penetrating voice, if they had got "Mr. Jeremy Garnet's last novel, 'The
Maneuvers of Arthur.'" Being informed that they had not, he clicked his

tongue cynically, advised the man in charge to order that work, as the
demand for it might be expected shortly to be large, and spent a shilling
on a magazine and some weekly papers. Then, with ten minutes to
spare, he went off in search of Ukridge.
He found him on platform No. 6. The porter's first choice was, it
seemed, correct. The eleven-twenty was already alongside the platform,
and presently Garnet observed his porter cleaving a path toward him
with the portmanteau and golf clubs.
"Here you are!" shouted Ukridge. "Good for you. Thought you were
going to miss it."
Garnet shook hands with the smiling Mrs. Ukridge.
"I've got a carriage," said Ukridge, "and collared two corner seats. My
wife goes down in another. She dislikes the smell of smoke when she's
traveling. Let's pray that we get the carriage to ourselves. But all
London seems to be here this morning. Get in, old horse. I'll just see
her ladyship into her carriage and come back to you."
Garnet entered the compartment, and stood at the door, looking out in
order, after the friendly manner of the traveling Briton, to thwart an
invasion of fellow-travelers. Then he withdrew his head suddenly and
sat down. An elderly gentleman, accompanied by a girl, was coming
toward him. It was not this