e interviewing the parents of new pupils, and
the latter had gone away, as a rule, with a feeling that this must be
either the easy manner of genius or spirits, and hoping for the best.
Later, he had used it to perfect strangers in the streets. On one
occasion he had been heard to address a bishop by that title.

"Surprised to find me married, what? Garny, old boy"--sinking his
voice to what was intended to be a whisper--"take my tip. You go and
do the same. You feel another man. Give up this bachelor business.
It's a mug's game. Go and get married, my boy, go and get married. By
gad, I've forgotten to pay the cabby. Half a moment."

He was out of the door and on his way downstairs before the echoes of
his last remark had ceased to shake the window of the sitting room.
Garnet was left to entertain Mrs. Ukridge.

So far her share in the conversation had been small. Nobody talked
very much when Ukridge was on the scene. She sat on the edge of
Garnet's big basket chair, looking very small and quiet. She smiled
pleasantly, as she had done during the whole of the preceding
dialogue. It was apparently her chief form of expression.

Jerry Garnet felt very friendly toward her. He could not help pitying
her. Ukridge, he thought, was a very good person to know casually, but
a little of him, as his former headmaster had once said in a moody,
reflective voice, went a very long way. To be bound to him for life
was not the ideal state for a girl. If he had been a girl, he felt,
he would as soon have married a volcano.

"And she's so young," he thought, as he looked across at the basket
chair. "Quite a kid."

"You and Stanley have known each other a long time, haven't you?" said
the object of his pity, breaking the silence.

"Yes. Oh, yes," said Garnet. "Several years. We were masters at the
same school together."

Mrs. Ukridge leaned forward with round, shining eyes.

"Isn't he a _wonderful_ man, Mr. Garnet!" she said ecstatically.

Not yet, to judge from her expression and the tone of her voice, had
she had experience of the disadvantages attached to the position of
Mrs. Stanley Ukridge.

Garnet could agree with her there.

"Yes, he is certainly wonderful," he said.

"I believe he could do anything."

"Yes," said Garnet. He believed that Ukridge was at least capable of
anything.

"He has done so many things. Have you ever kept fowls?" she broke off
with apparent irrelevance.

"No," said Garnet. "You see, I spend