I sketched for her the progress we had made since her visit.
I was humorous concerning roop, epigrammatic on the subject of the
hired retainer and Edwin.

"Then the cat did come down from the chimney?" said Phyllis.

We both laughed, and--I can answer for myself--felt the better for it.

"He came down next day," I said, "and made an excellent lunch off one
of our best fowls. He also killed another, and only just escaped death
himself at the hands of Ukridge."

"Mr. Ukridge doesn't like him, does he?"

"If he does, he dissembles his love. Edwin is Mrs. Ukridge's pet. He
is the only subject on which they disagree. Edwin is certainly in the
way on a chicken farm. He has got over his fear of Bob, and is now
perfectly lawless. We have to keep a constant eye on him."

"And have you had any success with the incubator? I love incubators. I
have always wanted to have one of my own, but we have never kept
fowls."

"The incubator has not done all that it should have done," I said.
"Ukridge looks after it, and I fancy his methods are not the right
methods. I don't know if I have got the figures absolutely correct,
but Ukridge reasons on these lines. He says you are supposed to keep
the temperature up to a hundred and five degrees. I think he said a
hundred and five. Then the eggs are supposed to hatch out in a week or
so. He argues that you may just as well keep the temperature at
seventy-two, and wait a fortnight for your chickens. I am certain
there's a fallacy in the system somewhere, because we never seem to
get as far as the chickens. But Ukridge says his theory is
mathematically sound and he sticks to it."

"Are you quite sure that the way you are doing it is the best way to
manage a chicken farm?"

"I should very much doubt it. I am a child in these matters. I had
only seen a chicken in its wild state once or twice before we came
down here. I had never dreamed of being an active assistant on a real
farm. The whole thing began like Mr. George Ade's fable of the author.
An author--myself--was sitting at his desk trying to turn out
something that could be converted into breakfast food, when a friend
came in and sat down on the table and told him to go right on and not
mind him."

"Did Mr. Ukridge do that?"

"Very nearly that. He called at my rooms one beautiful morning when I
was feeling desperately tired of London and overworked and dying for a
holiday, and suggested that I should come to Lyme Regis with him and