ting out
plans and ideas and scribbling down his accounts (which must have been
complicated) on gilt-edged correspondence cards. From time to time he
abused his creditors, who were numerous.

Ukridge's financial methods were always puzzling to the ordinary mind.
We had hardly been at the farm a day before he began to order in a
vast supply of necessary and unnecessary articles--all on credit. Some
he got from the village, others from neighboring towns. He has a way
with him, like Father O'Flynn, and the tradesmen behaved beautifully.
The things began to pour in from all sides--suits, groceries (of the
very best), a piano, a gramophone, and pictures of all kinds. He was
not one of those men who want but little here below. He wanted a great
deal, and of a superior quality. If a tradesman suggested that a small
check on account would not be taken amiss, as one or two sordid
fellows of the village did, he became pathetic.

"Confound it, sir," he would say with tears in his voice, laying a
hand on the man's shoulder in an elder brotherly way, "it's a trifle
hard when a gentleman comes to settle here, that you should dun him
for things before he has settled the preliminary expenses about his
house."

This sounded well, and suggested the disbursement of huge sums for
rent. The fact that the house had been lent him rent free was kept
with some care in the background. Having weakened the man with pathos,
he would strike a sterner note. "A little more of this," he would go
on, "and I'll close my account. As it is, I think I will remove my
patronage to a firm which will treat me civilly. Why, sir, I've never
heard anything like it in all my experience." Upon which the man
would knuckle under and go away forgiven, with a large order for more
goods.

Once, when Ukridge and I were alone, I ventured to expostulate. High
finance was always beyond my mental grasp. "Pay?" he exclaimed, "of
course we shall pay. You don't seem to realize the possibilities of
this business. Garny, my boy, we are on to a big thing. The money
isn't coming in yet. We must give it time. But soon we shall be
turning over hundreds every week. I am in touch with Whiteley's and
Harrod's and all the big places. Perfectly simple business matter.
Here I am, I said, with a large chicken farm with all the modern
improvements. You want eggs, I said. I supply them. I will let you
have so many hundred eggs a week, I said; what will you give for them?
Well, their term