g
them to be good chaps and wait till Wednesday week. Trifling! Why,
those thirteen eggs were absolutely all we had over after Mrs. Beale
had taken what she wanted for the kitchen. As a matter of fact, if it's
anybody's fault, it's Mrs. Beale's. That woman literally eats eggs."

"The habit is not confined to her," I said.

"Well, what I mean to say is, she seems to bathe in them."

"She says she needs so many for puddings, dear," said Mrs. Ukridge. "I
spoke to her about it yesterday. And of course, we often have
omelettes."

"She can't make omelettes without breaking eggs," I urged.

"She can't make them without breaking us, dammit," said Ukridge. "One
or two more omelettes, and we're done for. No fortune on earth could
stand it. We mustn't have any more omelettes, Millie. We must
economise. Millions of people get on all right without omelettes. I
suppose there are families where, if you suddenly produced an omelette,
the whole strength of the company would get up and cheer, led by
father. Cancel the omelettes, old girl, from now onward."

"Yes, dear. But--"

"Well?"

"I don't _think_ Mrs. Beale would like that very much, dear. She has
been complaining a good deal about chicken at every meal. She says that
the omelettes are the only things that give her a chance. She says
there are always possibilities in an omelette."

"In short," I said, "what you propose to do is deliberately to remove
from this excellent lady's life the one remaining element of poetry.
You mustn't do it. Give Mrs. Beale her omelettes, and let's hope for a
larger supply of eggs."

"Another thing," said Ukridge. "It isn't only that there's a shortage
of eggs. That wouldn't matter so much if only we kept hatching out
fresh squads of chickens. I'm not saying the hens aren't doing their
best. I take off my hat to the hens. As nice a hard-working lot as I
ever want to meet, full of vigour and earnestness. It's that damned
incubator that's letting us down all the time. The rotten thing won't
work. _I_ don't know what's the matter with it. The long and the short
of it is that it simply declines to incubate."

"Perhaps it's your dodge of letting down the temperature. You remember,
you were telling me? I forget the details."

"My dear old boy," he said earnestly, "there's nothing wrong with my
figures. It's a mathematical certainty. What's the good of mathematics
if not to help you work out that sort of thing? No, there's something
deuced wron