e. They should have been
here to-day. It's a little hard. Here am I, all eagerness and anxiety,
waiting to start an up-to-date chicken farm, and no fowls! I can't run
a chicken farm without fowls. If they don't come to-morrow, I shall get
after those people with a hatchet. There must be no slackness. They
must bustle about. After tea I'll show you the garden, and we'll choose
a place for a fowl-run. To-morrow we must buckle to. Serious work will
begin immediately after breakfast."

"Suppose," I said, "the fowls arrive before we're ready for them?"

"Why, then they must wait."

"But you can't keep fowls cooped up indefinitely in a crate."

"Oh, that'll be all right. There's a basement to this house. We'll let
'em run about there till we're ready for them. There's always a way of
doing things if you look for it. Organisation, my boy. That's the
watchword. Quiet efficiency."

"I hope you are going to let the hens hatch some of the eggs, dear,"
said Mrs. Ukridge. "I should love to have some little chickens."

"Of course. By all means. My idea," said Ukridge, "was this. These
people will send us fifty fowls of sorts. That means--call it
forty-five eggs a day. Let 'em ... Well, I'm hanged! There's that dog
again. Where's the jug?"

But this time an unforeseen interruption prevented the manoeuvre being
the success it had been before. I had turned the handle and was about
to pull the door open, while Ukridge, looking like some modern and
dilapidated version of the _Discobolus_, stood beside me with his jug
poised, when a voice spoke from the window.

"Stand still!" said the voice, "or I'll corpse you!"

I dropped the handle. Ukridge dropped the jug. Mrs. Ukridge dropped her
tea-cup. At the window, with a double-barrelled gun in his hands, stood
a short, square, red-headed man. The muzzle of his gun, which rested on
the sill, was pointing in a straight line at the third button of my
waistcoat.

Ukridge emitted a roar like that of a hungry lion.

"Beale! You scoundrelly, unprincipled, demon! What the devil are you
doing with that gun? Why were you out? What have you been doing? Why
did you shout like that? Look what you've made me do."

He pointed to the floor. The very old pair of tennis shoes which he
wore were by this time generously soaked with the spilled water.

"Lor, Mr. Ukridge, sir, is that you?" said the red-headed man calmly.
"I thought you was burglars."

A short bark from the other side of the kitche