Love Among the Chickens by P. G. Wodehouse (the reading list book .TXT) 📕

of his own on the subject before I could get near enough to him to whisper a warning. When I did, I suppose I must have whispered louder than I had intended, for the professor heard me, and my words acted as the match to the powder.

“He’s touchy about Ireland, is he?” he thundered. “Drop it, is it? And why? Why, sir? I’m one of the best tempered men that ever came from Dublin, let me tell you, and I will not stay here to be insulted by the insinuation that I cannot discuss Ireland as calmly as anyone in this company or out of it. Touchy about Ireland, is it? Touchy⁠—?”

“But, professor⁠—”

“Take your hand off my arm, Mr. Garnet. I will not be treated like a child. I am as competent to discuss the affairs of Ireland without heat as any man, let me tell you.”

“Father⁠—”

“And let me tell you, Mr. Ukridge, that I consider your opinions poisonous. Poisonous, sir. And you know nothing whatever about the subject, sir. Every word you say betrays your profound ignorance. I don’t wish to see you or to speak to you again. Understand that, sir. Our acquaintance began today, and it will cease today. Good night to you, sir. Come, Phyllis, me dear. Mrs. Ukridge, good night.”

IX Dies Irae

Why is it, I wonder, that stories of Retribution calling at the wrong address, strike us as funny instead of pathetic? I myself had been amused by them many a time. In a book which I had read only a few days before our cold-dinner party a shop-woman, annoyed with an omnibus conductor, had thrown a superannuated orange at him. It had found its billet not on him but on a perfectly inoffensive spectator. The missile, said the writer, “ ’it a young copper full in the hyeball.” I had enjoyed this when I read it, but now that Fate had arranged a precisely similar situation, with myself in the role of the young copper, the fun of the thing appealed to me not at all.

It was Ukridge who was to blame for the professor’s regrettable explosion and departure, and he ought by all laws of justice to have suffered for it. As it was, I was the only person materially affected. It did not matter to Ukridge. He did not care twopence one way or the other. If the professor were friendly, he was willing to talk to him by the hour on any subject, pleasant or unpleasant. If, on the other hand, he wished to have nothing more to do with us, it did not worry him. He was content to let him go. Ukridge was a self-sufficing person.

But to me it was a serious matter. More than serious. If I have done my work as historian with an adequate degree of skill, the reader should have gathered by this time the state of my feelings.

“I did not love as others do:
None ever did that I’ve heard tell of.
My passion was a byword through
The town she was, of course, the belle of.”

At least it was⁠—fortunately⁠—not quite that; but it was certainly genuine and most disturbing, and it grew with the days. Somebody with a taste for juggling with figures might write a very readable page or so of statistics in connection with the growth of love. In some cases it is, I believe, slow. In my own I can only say that Jack’s beanstalk was a backward plant in comparison. It is true that we had not seen a great deal of one another, and that, when we had met, our interview had been brief and our conversation conventional; but it is the intervals between the meeting that do the real damage. Absence⁠—I do not claim the thought as my own⁠—makes the heart grow fonder. And now, thanks to Ukridge’s amazing idiocy, a barrier had been thrust between us. Lord knows, the business of fishing for a girl’s heart is sufficiently difficult and delicate without the addition of needless obstacles. To cut out the naval miscreant under equal conditions would have been a task ample enough for my modest needs. It was terrible to have to reestablish myself in the good graces of the professor before I could so much as begin to dream of Phyllis. Ukridge gave me no balm.

“Well, after all,” he said, when I pointed out to him quietly but plainly my opinion of his tactlessness, “what does it matter? Old Derrick isn’t the only person in the world. If he doesn’t want to know us, laddie, we just jolly well pull ourselves together and stagger along without him. It’s quite possible to be happy without knowing old Derrick. Millions of people are going about the world at this moment, singing like larks out of pure lightheartedness, who don’t even know of his existence. And, as a matter of fact, old horse, we haven’t time to waste making friends and being the social pets. Too much to do on the farm. Strict business is the watchword, my boy. We must be the keen, tense men of affairs, or, before we know where we are, we shall find ourselves right in the gumbo.

“I’ve noticed, Garny, old horse, that you haven’t been the whale for work lately that you might be. You must buckle to, laddie. There must be no slackness. We are at a critical stage. On our work now depends the success of the speculation. Look at those damned cocks. They’re always fighting. Heave a stone at them, laddie, while you’re up. What’s the matter with you? You seem pipped. Can’t get the novel off your chest, or what? You take my tip and give your brain a rest. Nothing like manual labour for clearing the brain. All the doctors say so. Those coops ought to be painted today or tomorrow. Mind you, I think old Derrick would be all right if one persevered⁠—”

“⁠—and didn’t call him a fat little buffer and