Love Among the Chickens

ttle down to a certain extent. The coops were finished. They were not masterpieces, and I have seen chickens pause before them in de

and from time to time abusing his creditors, who were numerous. For we had hardly been in residence a day before he began to order in a vast supply of necessary and unnecessary things, all on credit. Some he got from the village, others from neighbouring towns. Axminster he laid heavily under contribution. He eve

and masterly. If a tradesman suggested that a small cheque on account wou

ry expenses about the house off his back." 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 woul

ery comfortable. I suppose we all realised that the things would

give it time. Soon we shall be turning over hundreds a week, hundreds! I'm in touch with all the big places,-Whiteley's, Harrod's, all the nibs. Here I am, I said to them, with a large chicken farm with all the modern improvements. You want egg

gg or just going to eat an egg or just coming away from eating an egg? I tell you, the good old egg is the foundation of daily life. Stop the first man you

n exchange. This satisfied Ukridge. He had a faith in the laying power of his hens which would have flattered them if

ow the honest smoker to take his after-breakfast pipe under ideal conditions. These are the pipes to which a man looks back in after years with a feeling of wistfu

ork in placid independence of the conditions of life. But I was making up for lost time now. With each blue cloud that left my lips and hung in the still air above me, striking scenes and freshets of sparkling dialogue rushed through my brain. Another

was not

tch her, Garn

Bolshevist hen, always at the bottom of any disturbance in the fowl-run, a bird which ate its head off daily at our expense and bit the hands which fed it by resolutely declining to lay a single egg. Behind this fowl ran Bob, doing, as usual, the thing that he ought not to have done. Bob's wrong-headedness in the matt

ible factor in the pursuit. He was not built for speed. Already the pace had pro

ld horse! Valuable b

and we passed out of the paddock in the following order. First, Aunt Elizabeth, as fresh as paint, going well. Next, Bob, panting

e. I continued to pound along doggedly. I was grimly resolute. I had caught Aunt Elizabeth's eye as she passed me, and the contempt in it had cut me to the quick. This bird despised me. I am not a violent or a quick-tem

ground began to rise. I was in that painful condition which occurs when one has lost one's

and even began to peck in a tentative manner at the grass. Her behaviour infuriated me. I felt that I was being treated as a cipher. I vowed that this bird should realise yet, even if, as seemed probable, I bu

t Aunt Elizabeth, apparently distrait, had the situation well in hand. She da

The sun blazed down, concentrating its rays on my back to the exclusion

st as I came close enough once more to stake my all on a single grab, Aunt Elizabeth, with another of her sardonic chuckles, dived in head-foremost and struggled through in the mysterious way

the next moment I found myself emerging with a black face and tottering knees on the gravel path of a private garden. Beyond the path was a cr

ad travelled down with us in the train

racle of adroitness he had captured Aunt Elizabeth, and was holding h