s
ago. Gay old bird, he was. He--"

"This is the fowl-run, professor," I broke in, with a moist, tingling
feeling across my forehead and up my spine. I saw the professor stiffen
as he walked, while his face deepened in colour. Ukridge's breezy way
of expressing himself is apt to electrify the stranger.

"You will notice the able way--ha! ha!--in which the wire-netting is
arranged," I continued feverishly. "Took some doing, that. By Jove,
yes. It was hot work. Nice lot of fowls, aren't they? Rather a mixed
lot, of course. Ha! ha! That's the dealer's fault though. We are
getting quite a number of eggs now. Hens wouldn't lay at first.
Couldn't make them."

I babbled on, till from the corner of my eye I saw the flush fade from
the professor's face and his back gradually relax its poker-like
attitude. The situation was saved for the moment but there was no
knowing what further excesses Ukridge might indulge in. I managed to
draw him aside as we went through the fowl-run, and expostulated.

"For goodness sake, be careful," I whispered. "You've no notion how
touchy he is."

"But _I_ said nothing," he replied, amazed.

"Hang it, you know, nobody likes to be called a fat little buffer to
his face."

"What! My dear old man, nobody minds a little thing like that. We can't
be stilted and formal. It's ever so much more friendly to relax and be
chummy."

Here we rejoined the others, and I was left with a leaden foreboding of
gruesome things in store. I knew what manner of man Ukridge was when he
relaxed and became chummy. Friendships of years' standing had failed to
survive the test.

For the time being, however, all went well. In his role of lecturer he
offended no one, and Phyllis and her father behaved admirably. They
received his strangest theories without a twitch of the mouth.

"Ah," the professor would say, "now is that really so? Very interesting
indeed."

Only once, when Ukridge was describing some more than usually original
device for the furthering of the interests of his fowls, did a slight
spasm disturb Phyllis's look of attentive reverence.

"And you have really had no previous experience in chicken-farming?"
she said.

"None," said Ukridge, beaming through his glasses. "Not an atom. But I
can turn my hand to anything, you know. Things seem to come naturally
to me somehow."

"I see," said Phyllis.

It was while matters were progressing with this beautiful smoothness
that I observed the square form