ir, though I imagine
Ukridge bears it with fortitude. That much-enduring man has had a
lifetime's training in bearing things with fortitude.

He seemed in his customary jovial spirits now, as he dashed into the
room, clinging on to the pince-nez which even ginger-beer wire rarely
kept stable for two minutes together.

"My dear old man," he shouted, springing at me and seizing my hand in
the grip like the bite of a horse. "How _are_ you, old buck? This is
good. By Jove, this is fine, what?"

He dashed to the door and looked out.

"Come on Millie! Pick up the waukeesis. Here's old Garnet, looking just
the same as ever. Devilish handsome fellow! You'll be glad you came
when you see him. Beats the Zoo hollow!"

There appeared round the corner of Ukridge a young woman. She paused in
the doorway and smiled pleasantly.

"Garny, old horse," said Ukridge with some pride, "this is _her_! The
pride of the home. Companion of joys and sorrows and all the rest of
it. In fact," in a burst of confidence, "my wife."

I bowed awkwardly. The idea of Ukridge married was something too
overpowering to be readily assimilated.

"Buck up, old horse," said Ukridge encouragingly. He had a painful
habit of addressing all and sundry by that title. In his school-master
days--at one period of his vivid career he and I had been colleagues on
the staff of a private school--he had made use of it 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 due to
alcohol, and hoping for the best. He also used it to perfect strangers
in the streets, and on one occasion had been heard to address a bishop
by that title, rendering that dignitary, as Mr. Baboo Jaberjee would
put it, _sotto voce_ with gratification. "Surprised to find me married,
what? Garny, old boy,"--sinking his voice to a whisper almost inaudible
on the other side of the street--"take my tip. Go and jump off the dock
yourself. You'll feel another man. Give up this bachelor business. It's
a mug's game. I look on you bachelors as excrescences on the social
system. I regard you, old man, purely and simply as a wart. Go and get
married, laddie, go and get married. By gad, I've forgotten to pay the
cabby. Lend me a couple of bob, Garny old chap."

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