to understand,
for he betrayed no emotion. "It is Fate, Hawk," I said, "simply Fate.
There is a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,
and it's no good grumbling."

"Yiss," said Mr. Hawk, after chewing this sentiment for a while in
silence, "so she said me, 'Hawk,' she said--like that--'you're a girt
fule----'"

"That's all right," I replied. "I quite understand. As I say, it's
simply Fate. Good-bye." And I left him.

As I was going back, I met the professor and Phyllis. They passed me
without a look.

I wandered on in quite a fervour of self-pity. I was in one of those
moods when life suddenly seems to become irksome, when the future
stretches black and grey in front of one. I should have liked to have
faded almost imperceptibly from the world, like Mr. Bardell, even if,
as in his case, it had involved being knocked on the head with a pint
pot in a public-house cellar.

In such a mood it is imperative that one should seek distraction. The
shining example of Mr. Harry Hawk did not lure me. Taking to drink
would be a nuisance. Work was what I wanted. I would toil like a navvy
all day among the fowls, separating them when they fought, gathering in
the eggs when they laid, chasing them across country when they got
away, and even, if necessity arose, painting their throats with
turpentine when they were stricken with roop. Then, after dinner, when
the lamps were lit, and Mrs. Ukridge nursed Edwin and sewed, and
Ukridge smoked cigars and incited the gramophone to murder "Mumbling
Mose," I would steal away to my bedroom and write--and write--and
_write_. And go on writing till my fingers were numb and my eyes
refused to do their duty. And, when time had passed, I might come to
feel that it was all for the best. A man must go through the fire
before he can write his masterpiece. We learn in suffering what we
teach in song. What we lose on the swings we make up on the
roundabouts. Jerry Garnet, the Man, might become a depressed, hopeless
wreck, with the iron planted immovably in his soul; but Jeremy Garnet,
the Author, should turn out such a novel of gloom, that strong critics
would weep, and the public jostle for copies till Mudie's doorway
became a shambles.

Thus might I some day feel that all this anguish was really a
blessing--effectively disguised.

* * * * *

But I doubted it.

* * * * *

We were none of us very cheerful now at the farm. Even Ukridge's spirit
was a little daunted by