“Where are you going to put them?”
“That spot we chose by the paddock. That’s the place. Plenty of mud for them to scratch about in, and they can go into the field when they feel like it, and pick up worms, or whatever they feed on. We must rig them up some sort of shanty, I suppose, this morning. We’ll go and tell ’em to send up some wire-netting and stuff from the town.”
“Then we shall want hen-coops. We shall have to make those.”
“Of course. So we shall. Millie, didn’t I tell you that old Garnet was the man to think of things. I forgot the coops. We can’t buy some, I suppose? On tick, of course.”
“Cheaper to make them. Suppose we get a lot of boxes. Sugar boxes are as good as any. It won’t take long to knock up a few coops.”
Ukridge thumped the table with enthusiasm, upsetting his cup.
“Garny, old horse, you’re a marvel. You think of everything. We’ll buckle to right away, and get the whole pace fixed up the same as mother makes it. What an infernal noise those birds are making. I suppose they don’t feel at home in the yard. Wait till they see the A1 compact 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 with much interest, was roused from his reflections and despatched to the town for the wire and sugar boxes. Ukridge, taking his place at the gate, gazed at the fowls with the affectionate air of a proprietor.
“Well, they have certainly taken you at your word,” I said, “as far as variety is concerned.”
The man with the manners of a marquess seemed to have been at great pains to send a really representative selection of fowls. There were blue ones, black ones, white, grey, yellow, brown, big, little, Dorkings, Minorcas, Cochin Chinas, Bantams, Wyandottes. It was an imposing spectacle.
The Hired Man returned towards 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 I, 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 my 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,” he said, beaming through misty pince-nez over a long glass. “That is the stuff to administer to ’em! At this rate we shall have the place in corking condition before bedtime. Quiet efficiency–that’s the wheeze! What do you think of those for coops, Beale?”
The Hired Man examined them woodenly.
“I’ve seen worse, sir.”
He continued his examination.
“But not many,” he added. Beale’s passion for the truth had made him unpopular in three regiments.
“They aren’t so bad,” I said, “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 labour the housing arrangements of the fowls were still in an incomplete state at the end of the day. The details of the evening’s work are preserved in a letter which I wrote that night to my friend Lickford.
“… Have you ever played a game called Pigs in Clover? We have just finished a merry bout of it, with hens instead of marbles, which has lasted for an hour and a half. We are all dead tired, except the Hired Man, who seems to be made of india-rubber. He has just gone for a stroll on the beach. Wants some exercise, I suppose. Personally, I feel as if I should never move again. You have no conception of the difficulty of rounding up fowls and getting them safely to bed. Having no proper place to put them, we were obliged to stow some of them in the cube sugar-boxes and the rest in the basement. It has only just occurred to me that they ought to have had perches to roost on. It didn’t strike me before. I shan’t mention it to Ukridge, or that indomitable man will start making some, and drag me into it, too. After all, a hen can rough it for one night, and if I did a stroke more work I should collapse.