dge thumped the table with enthusiasm.

"Garny, old horse, you're a marvel. You think of everything. We'll
buckle to right away. What a noise those fowls are making. I suppose
they don't feel at home in the yard. Wait till they see the A1
residential mansions we're going to put up for them. Finished
breakfast? Then let's go out. Come along, Millie."

The red-headed Beale, discovered leaning in an attitude of thought on
the yard gate, and observing the feathered mob below, was roused from
his reflections and dispatched to the town for the wire and soap
boxes. Ukridge, taking his place at the gate, gazed at the fowls with
the affectionate eye of a proprietor.

"Well, they have certainly taken you at your word," said Garnet, "as
far as variety is concerned."

The man with the manners of a marquis seemed to have been at great
pains to send a really representative supply of fowls. There were blue
ones, black ones, white, gray, yellow, brown, big, little, Dorkings,
Minorcas, Cochin Chinas, Bantams, Orpingtons, Wyandottes, and a host
more. It was an imposing spectacle.

The hired man returned toward the end of the morning, preceded by a
cart containing the necessary wire and boxes, and Ukridge, whose
enthusiasm brooked no delay, started immediately the task of
fashioning the coops, while Garnet, assisted by Beale, draped the wire
netting about the chosen spot next to the paddock. There were little
unpleasantnesses--once a roar of anguish told that Ukridge's hammer
had found the wrong billet, and on another occasion Garnet's flannel
trousers suffered on the wire--but the work proceeded steadily. By the
middle of the afternoon things were in a sufficiently advanced state
to suggest to Ukridge the advisability of a halt for refreshments.

"That's the way to do it," said he. "At this rate we shall have the
place in A1 condition before bedtime. What do you think of those for
coops, Beale?"

The hired man examined them gravely.

"I've seen worse, sir."

He continued his examination.

"But not many," he added. Beale's passion for truth had made him
unpopular in three regiments.

"They aren't so bad," said Garnet, "but I'm glad I'm not a fowl."

"So you ought to be," said Ukridge, "considering the way you've put up
that wire. You'll have them strangling themselves."

In spite of earnest labor, the housing arrangements of the fowls were
still in an incomplete state at the end of the day. The details of the
evening's wo