ong glass. "That is the stuff to administer to 'em! At this
rate we shall have the place in corking condition before bedtime. Quiet
efficiency--that's the wheeze! What do you think of those for coops,
Beale?"

The Hired Man examined them woodenly.

"I've seen worse, sir."

He continued his examination.

"But not many," he added. Beale's passion for the truth had made him
unpopular in three regiments.

"They aren't so bad," I said, "but I'm glad I'm not a fowl."

"So you ought to be," said Ukridge, "considering the way you've put up
that wire. You'll have them strangling themselves."

In spite of earnest labour the housing arrangements of the fowls were
still in an incomplete state at the end of the day. The details of the
evening's work are preserved in a letter which I wrote that night to my
friend Lickford.

"... Have you ever played a game called Pigs in Clover? We have just
finished a merry bout of it, with hens instead of marbles, which has
lasted for an hour and a half. We are all dead tired, except the Hired
Man, who seems to be made of india-rubber. He has just gone for a
stroll on the beach. Wants some exercise, I suppose. Personally, I feel
as if I should never move again. You have no conception of the
difficulty of rounding up fowls and getting them safely to bed. Having
no proper place to put them, we were obliged to stow some of them in
the cube sugar-boxes and the rest in the basement. It has only just
occurred to me that they ought to have had perches to roost on. It
didn't strike me before. I shan't mention it to Ukridge, or that
indomitable man will start making some, and drag me into it, too. After
all, a hen can rough it for one night, and if I did a stroke more work
I should collapse.

"My idea was to do the thing on the slow but sure principle. That is to
say, take each bird singly and carry it to bed. It would have taken
some time, but there would have been no confusion. But you can imagine
that that sort of thing would not appeal to Stanley Featherstonehaugh!
He likes his manoeuvres to be on a large, dashing, Napoleonic scale. He
said, 'Open the yard gate and let the blighters come out into the open;
then sail in and drive them in mass formation through the back door
into the basement.' It was a great idea, but there was one fatal flaw
in it. It didn't allow for the hens scattering. We opened the gate, and
out they all came like an audience coming out of a theatre. Then we
closed in