nother
half hour, and posterity would have known me as "Garnet."

But it was not to be.

"Stop her! Catch her, Garny, old horse!"

I had wandered into the paddock at the moment. I looked up. Coming
towards me at her best pace was a small hen. I recognised her
immediately. It was the disagreeable, sardonic-looking bird which
Ukridge, on the strength of an alleged similarity of profile to his
wife's nearest relative, had christened Aunt Elizabeth. A Bolshevist
hen, always at the bottom of any disturbance in the fowl-run, a bird
which ate its head off daily at our expense and bit the hands which fed
it by resolutely declining to lay a single egg. Behind this fowl ran
Bob, doing, as usual, the thing that he ought not to have done. Bob's
wrong-headedness in the matter of our hens was a constant source of
inconvenience. From the first, he had seemed to regard the laying-in of
our stock purely in the nature of a tribute to his sporting tastes. He
had a fixed idea that he was a hunting dog and that, recognising this,
we had very decently provided him with the material for the chase.

Behind Bob came Ukridge. But a glance was enough to tell me that he was
a negligible factor in the pursuit. He was not built for speed. Already
the pace had proved too much for him, and he had appointed me his
deputy, with full powers to act.

"After her, Garny, old horse! Valuable bird! Mustn't be lost!"

When not in a catalepsy of literary composition, I am essentially the
man of action. I laid aside my novel for future reference, and we
passed out of the paddock in the following order. First, Aunt
Elizabeth, as fresh as paint, going well. Next, Bob, panting and
obviously doubtful of his powers of staying the distance. Lastly,
myself, determined, but wishing I were five years younger.

After the first field Bob, like the dilettante and unstable dog he was,
gave it up, and sauntered off to scratch at a rabbit-hole with an
insufferable air of suggesting that that was what he had come out for
all the time. I continued to pound along doggedly. I was grimly
resolute. I had caught Aunt Elizabeth's eye as she passed me, and the
contempt in it had cut me to the quick. This bird despised me. I am not
a violent or a quick-tempered man, but I have my self-respect. I will
not be sneered at by hens. All the abstract desire for Fame which had
filled my mind five minutes before was concentrated now on the task of
capturing this supercilious bird.

We