nued to talk easily on all subjects, unconscious of the fact that
the party was depressed and at least one of his guests rapidly becoming
irritable. I watched the professor furtively as Ukridge talked on, and
that ominous phrase of Mr. Chase's concerning four-point-seven guns
kept coming into my mind. If Ukridge were to tread on any of his pet
corns, as he might at any minute, there would be an explosion. The
snatching of the dinner from his very mouth, as it were, and the
substitution of a bread-and-cheese and sardines menu had brought him to
the frame of mind when men turn and rend their nearest and dearest.

The sight of the table, when at length we filed into the dining room,
sent a chill through me. It was a meal for the very young or the very
hungry. The uncompromising coldness and solidity of the viands was
enough to appall a man conscious that his digestion needed humouring. A
huge cheese faced us in almost a swashbuckling way. I do not know how
else to describe it. It wore a blatant, rakish,
_nemo-me-impune-lacessit_ air, and I noticed that the professor
shivered slightly as he saw it. Sardines, looking more oily and
uninviting than anything I had ever seen, appeared in their native tin
beyond the loaf of bread. There was a ham, in its third quarter, and a
chicken which had suffered heavily during a previous visit to the
table. Finally, a black bottle of whisky stood grimly beside Ukridge's
plate. The professor looked the sort of man who drank claret of a
special year, or nothing.

We got through the meal somehow, and did our best to delude ourselves
into the idea that it was all great fun; but it was a shallow pretence.
The professor was very silent by the time we had finished. Ukridge had
been terrible. The professor had forced himself to be genial. He had
tried to talk. He had told stories. And when he began one--his stories
would have been the better for a little more briskness and
condensation--Ukridge almost invariably interrupted him, before he had
got half way through, without a word of apology, and started on some
anecdote of his own. He furthermore disagreed with nearly every opinion
the professor expressed. It is true that he did it all in such a
perfectly friendly way, and was obviously so innocent of any intention
of giving offence, that another man--or the same man at a better
meal--might have overlooked the matter. But the professor, robbed of
his good dinner, was at the stage when he had to att