far is to take it out in apologetic
letters from Millie. Now, I don't suppose there's a woman alive who can
write a better apologetic letter than her nibs, but, if you're
broad-minded and can face facts, you can't help seeing that the
juiciest apologetic letter is not an egg. I meant to say, look at it
from their point of view. Harrod--or Whiteley--comes into his store in
the morning, rubbing his hands expectantly. 'Well,' he says, 'how many
eggs from Combe Regis to-day?' And instead of leading him off to a
corner piled up with bursting crates, they show him a four-page letter
telling him it'll all come right in the future. I've never run a store
myself, but I should think that would jar a chap. Anyhow, the blighters
seem to be getting tired of waiting."

"The last letter from Harrod's was quite pathetic," said Mrs. Ukridge
sadly.

I had a vision of an eggless London. I seemed to see homes rendered
desolate and lives embittered by the slump, and millionaires bidding
against one another for the few rare specimens which Ukridge had
actually managed to despatch to Brompton and Bayswater.

Ukridge, having induced himself to be broad-minded for five minutes,
now began to slip back to his own personal point of view and became
once more the man with a grievance. His fleeting sympathy with the
wrongs of Mr. Harrod and Mr. Whiteley disappeared.

"What it all amounts to," he said complainingly, "is that they're
infernally unreasonable. I've done everything possible to meet them.
Nothing could have been more manly and straightforward than my
attitude. I told them in my last letter but three that I proposed to
let them have the eggs on the _Times_ instalment system, and they said
I was frivolous. They said that to send thirteen eggs as payment for
goods supplied to the value of 25 pounds 1s. 8 1/2 d. was mere
trifling. Trifling, I'll trouble you! That's the spirit in which they
meet my suggestions. It was Harrod who did that. I've never met Harrod
personally, but I'd like to, just to ask him if that's his idea of
cementing amiable business relations. He knows just as well as anyone
else that without credit commerce has no elasticity. It's an elementary
rule. I'll bet he'd have been sick if chappies had refused to let him
have tick when he was starting his store. Do you suppose Harrod, when
he started in business, paid cash down on the nail for everything? Not
a bit of it. He went about taking people by the coat-button and askin