nd he ought by all laws of justice to have
suffered for it. As it was, I was the only person materially affected.
It did not matter to Ukridge. He did not care twopence one way or the
other. If the professor were friendly, he was willing to talk to him by
the hour on any subject, pleasant or unpleasant. If, on the other hand,
he wished to have nothing more to do with us, it did not worry him. He
was content to let him go. Ukridge was a self-sufficing person.

But to me it was a serious matter. More than serious. If I have done my
work as historian with an adequate degree of skill, the reader should
have gathered by this time the state of my feelings.

"I did not love as others do:
None ever did that I've heard tell of.
My passion was a by-word through
The town she was, of course, the belle of."

At least it was--fortunately--not quite that; but it was certainly
genuine and most disturbing, and it grew with the days. Somebody with a
taste for juggling with figures might write a very readable page or so
of statistics in connection with the growth of love. In some cases it
is, I believe, slow. In my own I can only say that Jack's beanstalk was
a backward plant in comparison. It is true that we had not seen a great
deal of one another, and that, when we had met, our interview had been
brief and our conversation conventional; but it is the intervals
between the meeting that do the real damage. Absence--I do not claim
the thought as my own--makes the heart grow fonder. And now, thanks to
Ukridge's amazing idiocy, a barrier had been thrust between us. Lord
knows, the business of fishing for a girl's heart is sufficiently
difficult and delicate without the addition of needless obstacles. To
cut out the naval miscreant under equal conditions would have been a
task ample enough for my modest needs. It was terrible to have to
re-establish myself in the good graces of the professor before I could
so much as begin to dream of Phyllis. Ukridge gave me no balm.

"Well, after all," he said, when I pointed out to him quietly but
plainly my opinion of his tactlessness, "what does it matter? Old
Derrick isn't the only person in the world. If he doesn't want to know
us, laddie, we just jolly well pull ourselves together and stagger
along without him. It's quite possible to be happy without knowing old
Derrick. Millions of people are going about the world at this moment,
singing like larks out of pure light-heartedness, w