"I've only bin and drove 'im further up," said Mrs.
Beale.]

"Er--I think, my dear sir," said her father, "it would be hardly fair
of us to give any further trouble to Mrs. Ukridge and yourself. If you
will allow me, therefore, I will--"

Ukridge became gushingly hospitable. He refused to think of allowing
his guests to go empty away. He would be able to whack up something,
he said. There was quite a good deal of the ham left, he was sure. He
appealed to me to indorse his view that there was a tin of sardines
and part of a cold fowl and plenty of bread and cheese.

"And after all," he said, speaking for the whole company in the
generous, comprehensive way enthusiasts have, "what more do we want in
weather like this? A nice, light, cold dinner is ever so much better
for us than a lot of hot things."

The professor said nothing. He looked wan and unhappy.

We strolled out again into the garden, but somehow things seemed to
drag. Conversation was fitful, except on the part of Ukridge, who
continued 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 humoring. A
huge cheese faced us in almost a swash-buckling way, 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.

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
pretense. The professor was very silent by the time