V
Sunshine, streaming into his bedroom through the open window, woke
Garnet next day as distant clocks were striking eight. It was a lovely
morning, cool and fresh. The grass of the lawn, wet with dew, sparkled
in the sun. A thrush, who knew all about early birds and their
perquisites, was filling in the time before the arrival of the worm
with a song or two as he sat in the bushes. In the ivy a colony of
sparrows were opening the day well with a little brisk fighting. On
the gravel in front of the house lay the mongrel Bob, blinking lazily.
The gleam of the sea through the trees turned Garnet's thoughts to
bathing. He dressed quickly and went out. Bob rose to meet him,
waving an absurdly long tail. The hatchet was definitely buried now.
That little matter of the jug of water was forgotten.
"Well, Bob," said Garnet, "coming down to watch me bathe?"
Bob uttered a bark of approval and ran before him to the gate.
A walk of five minutes brought Garnet to the sleepy little town. He
passed through the narrow street, and turned on to the beach, walking
in the direction of the cob, that combination of pier and breakwater
which the misadventures of one of Jane Austen's young misses have made
known to the outside public.
The tide was high, and Garnet, leaving his clothes to the care of Bob,
dived into twelve feet of clear, cold water. As he swam he compared it
with the morning tub of town, and felt that he had done well to come
with Ukridge to this pleasant spot. But he could not rely on unbroken
calm during the whole of his visit. He did not know a great deal about
chicken farming, but he was certain that Ukridge knew less. There
would be some strenuous moments before that farm became a profitable
commercial speculation. At the thought of Ukridge toiling on a hot
afternoon to manage an undisciplined mob of fowls, and becoming more
and more heated and voluble in the struggle, he laughed and promptly
swallowed a generous mouthful of salt water. There are few things
which depress the swimmer more than an involuntary draught of water.
Garnet turned and swam back to Bob and the clothes.
As he strolled back along the beach he came upon a small, elderly
gentleman toweling his head in a vigorous manner. Hearing Garnet's
footsteps, he suspended this operation for a moment and peered out at
him from beneath a turban of towel.
It was the elderly Irishman of the journey, the father of the
blue-eyed Phyllis. Then they had come on to Lyme Regis after all.
Garnet stopped, with some idea of going back and speaking to him; but
realizing that they were perfect strangers, he postponed this action
and followed Bob up the hill. In a small place like Lyme Regis it
would surely not be difficult to find somebody who would introduce
them. He cursed the custom which made such a thing necessary. In a
properly constituted country everybody would know everybody else
without fuss or trouble.
He found Ukridge, in his shirt sleeves and minus a collar, assailing a
large ham. Mrs. Ukridge, looking younger and more childlike than ever
in brown holland, smiled at him over the teapot.
"Here he is!" shouted Ukridge, catching sight of him. "Where have you
been, old horse? I went to your room, but you weren't there. Bathing?
Hope it's made you feel fit for work, because we've got to buckle to
this morning."
"The fowls have arrived, Mr. Garnet," said Mrs. Ukridge, opening her
eyes till she looked like an astonished kitten. "_Such_ a lot of them!
They're making such a noise!"
And to support her statement there floated through the window a
cackling, which, for volume and variety of key, beat anything that
Garnet had ever heard. Judging from the noise, it seemed as if England
had been drained of fowls and the entire tribe of them dumped into the
yard of the Ukridge's farm.
"There seems to have been no stint," he said, sitting down. "Did you
order a million or only nine hundred thousand?"
"Good many, aren't there?" said Ukridge complacently. "But that's
what we want. No good starting on a small scale. The more you have,
the bigger the profits."
"What sort have you got mostly?"
"Oh, all sorts. Bless you, people don't mind what breed a fowl is, so
long as it _is_ a fowl. These dealer chaps were so infernally
particular. 'Any Dorkings?' they said. 'All right,' I said, 'bring on
your Dorkings.' 'Or perhaps you want a few Minorcas?' 'Very well,' I
said, 'show Minorcas.' They were going on--they'd have gone on for
hours, but I stopped 'em. 'Look here, Maximilian,' I said to the
manager Johnny--decent old chap, with the manners of a marquis--'look
here,' I said, 'life is short, and we're neither of us as young as we
used to be. Don't let us waste the golden hours playing guessing
games. I want fowls. You sell fowls. So give me some of all sorts.'
And he has, by Jove! There must be one of every breed ever invented."
"Where are you going to put them?"
"That spot we chose by the paddock. That's the place. Plenty of mud
for them to scratch about in, and they can go into the field when they
want to, and pick up worms, or whatever they feed on. We must rig them
up some sort of a shanty, I suppose, this morning. We'll go and tell
'em to send up some wire netting and stuff from the town."
"Then we shall want hencoops. We shall have to make those."
"Of course. So we shall. Millie, didn't I tell you that old Garnet was
the man to think of things! I forgot the coops. We can't buy some, I
suppose? On tick?"
"Cheaper to make them. Suppose we get a lot of boxes. Soap boxes are
as good as any. It won't take long to knock up a few coops."
Ukridge thumped the table with enthusiasm.
"Garny, old horse, you're a marvel. You think of everything. We'll
buckle to right away. What a noise those fowls are making. I suppose
they don't feel at home in the yard. Wait till they see the A1
residential mansions we're going to put up for them. Finished
breakfast? Then let's go out. Come along, Millie."
The red-headed Beale, discovered leaning in an attitude of thought on
the yard gate, and observing the feathered mob below, was roused from
his reflections and dispatched to the town for the wire and soap
boxes. Ukridge, taking his place at the gate, gazed at the fowls with
the affectionate eye of a proprietor.
"Well, they have certainly taken you at your word," said Garnet, "as
far as variety is concerned."
The man with the manners of a marquis seemed to have been at great
pains to send a really representative supply of fowls. There were blue
ones, black ones, white, gray, yellow, brown, big, little, Dorkings,
Minorcas, Cochin Chinas, Bantams, Orpingtons, Wyandottes, and a host
more. It was an imposing spectacle.
The hired man returned toward the end of the morning, preceded by a
cart containing the necessary wire and boxes, and Ukridge, whose
enthusiasm brooked no delay, started immediately the task of
fashioning the coops, while Garnet, assisted by Beale, draped the wire
netting about the chosen spot next to the paddock. There were little
unpleasantnesses--once a roar of anguish told that Ukridge's hammer
had found the wrong billet, and on another occasion Garnet's flannel
trousers suffered on the wire--but the work proceeded steadily. By the
middle of the afternoon things were in a sufficiently advanced state
to suggest to Ukridge the advisability of a halt for refreshments.
"That's the way to do it," said he. "At this rate we shall have the
place in A1 condition before bedtime. What do you think of those for
coops, Beale?"
The hired man examined them gravely.
"I've seen worse, sir."
He continued his examination.
"But not many," he added. Beale's passion for truth had made him
unpopular in three regiments.
"They aren't so bad," said Garnet, "but I'm glad I'm not a fowl."
"So you ought to be," said Ukridge, "considering the way you've put up
that wire. You'll have them strangling themselves."
In spite of earnest labor, the housing arrangements of the fowls were
still in an incomplete state at the end of the day. The details of the
evening's work are preserved in a letter which Garnet wrote that
night to his friend Lickford.
* * * * *
"... Have you ever played a game called 'Pigs in Clover'? We have just
finished a bout of it (with hens instead of marbles) which has lasted
for an hour and a half. We are all dead tired except the hired man,
who seems to be made of India rubber. He has just gone for a stroll to
the beach. Wants some exercise, I suppose. Personally, I feel as if I
should never move again. I have run faster and farther than I have
done since I was at school. You have no conception of the difficulty
of rounding up fowls and getting them safely to bed. Having no proper
place to put them, we were obliged to stow some of them inside soap
boxes and the rest in the basement. It has only just occurred to me
that they ought to have had perches to roost on. It didn't strike me
before. I shall not mention it to Ukridge, or that indomitable man
will start making some, and drag me into it, too. After all, a hen can
rough it for one night, and if I did a stroke more work I should
collapse. My idea was to do the thing on the slow but sure principle.
That is to say, take each bird singly and carry it to bed. It would
have taken some time, but there would have been no confusion. But you
can imagine that that sort of thing would not appeal to Ukridge. There
is a touch of the Napoleon about him. He likes his maneuvers to be
daring and on a large scale. He said: 'Open the yard gate and let the
fowls come out into the open, then sail in and drive them in a mass
through the back door into the basement.' It was a great idea, but
there was one fatal flaw in it. It didn't allow for the hens
scattering. We opened the gate, and out they all came like an audience
coming out of a theater. Then we closed in on them to bring off the
big drive. For about three seconds it looked as if we might do it.
Then Bob, the hired man's dog, an animal who likes to be in whatever's
going on, rushed out of the house into the middle of them, barking.
There was a perfect stampede, and Heaven only knows where some of
those fowls are now. There was one in particular, a large yellow bird,
which, I should imagine, is nearing London by this time. The last I
saw of it, it was navigating at the rate of knots, so to speak, in
that direction, with Bob after it barking his hardest. Presently Bob
came back, panting, having evidently given up the job. We, in the
meantime, were chasing the rest of the birds all over the garden. The
thing had now resolved itself into the course of action I had
suggested originally, except that instead of collecting them quietly
and at our leisure, we had to run miles for each one we captured.
After a time we introduced some sort of system into it. Mrs. Ukridge
(fancy him married; did you know?) stood at the door. We chased the
hens and brought them in. Then as we put each through into the
basement, she shut the door on it. We also arranged Ukridge's soap-box
coops in a row, and when we caught a fowl we put it into the coop and
stuck a board in front of it. By these strenuous means we gathered in
about two thirds of the lot. The rest are all over England. A few may
be in Dorsetshire, but I should not like to bet on it.
"So you see things are being managed on the up-to-date chicken farm on
good, sound, Ukridge principles. This is only the beginning. I look
with confidence for further exciting events. I believe, if Ukridge
kept white mice, he would manage to knock some feverish excitement out
of it. He is at present lying on the sofa, smoking one of his infernal
brand of cigars. From the basement I can hear faintly the murmur of
innumerable fowls. We are a happy family; we are, we _are_, we ARE!
"P. S. Have you ever caught a fowl and carried it to roost? You take
it under the wings, and the feel of it sets one's teeth on edge. It is
a grisly experience. All the time you are carrying it, it makes faint
protesting noises and struggles feebly to escape.
"P. P. S. You know the opinion of Pythagoras respecting fowls. That
'the soul of our granddam might haply inhabit a bird.' I hope that
yellow hen which Bob chased into the purple night is not the
grandmamma of any friend of mine."