“The habit is not confined to her,” I said.
“Well, what I mean to say is, she seems to bathe in them.”
“She says she needs so many for puddings, dear,” said Mrs. Ukridge. “I spoke to her about it yesterday. And of course, we often have omelettes.”
“She can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs,” I urged.
“She can’t make them without breaking us, dammit,” said Ukridge. “One or two more omelettes, and we’re done for. No fortune on earth could stand it. We mustn’t have any more omelettes, Millie. We must economise. Millions of people get on all right without omelettes. I suppose there are families where, if you suddenly produced an omelette, the whole strength of the company would get up and cheer, led by father. Cancel the omelettes, old girl, from now onward.”
“Yes, dear. But–”
“Well?”
“I don’t /think/ Mrs. Beale would like that very much, dear. She has been complaining a good deal about chicken at every meal. She says that the omelettes are the only things that give her a chance. She says there are always possibilities in an omelette.”
“In short,” I said, “what you propose to do is deliberately to remove from this excellent lady’s life the one remaining element of poetry. You mustn’t do it. Give Mrs. Beale her omelettes, and let’s hope for a larger supply of eggs.”
“Another thing,” said Ukridge. “It isn’t only that there’s a shortage of eggs. That wouldn’t matter so much if only we kept hatching out fresh squads of chickens. I’m not saying the hens aren’t doing their best. I take off my hat to the hens. As nice a hard-working lot as I ever want to meet, full of vigour and earnestness. It’s that damned incubator that’s letting us down all the time. The rotten thing won’t work. /I/ don’t know what’s the matter with it. The long and the short of it is that it simply declines to incubate.”
“Perhaps it’s your dodge of letting down the temperature. You remember, you were telling me? I forget the details.”
“My dear old boy,” he said earnestly, “there’s nothing wrong with my figures. It’s a mathematical certainty. What’s the good of mathematics if not to help you work out that sort of thing? No, there’s something deuced wrong with the machine itself, and I shall probably make a complaint to the people I got it from. Where did we get the incubator, old girl?”
“Harrod’s, I think, dear,–yes, it was Harrod’s. It came down with the first lot of things.”
“Then,” said Ukridge, banging the table with his fist, while his glasses flashed triumph, “we’ve got ’em. The Lord has delivered Harrod’s into our hand. Write and answer that letter of theirs to- night, Millie. Sit on them.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Tell ’em that we’d have sent them their confounded eggs long ago, if only their rotten, twopenny-ha’penny incubator had worked with any approach to decency.” He paused. “Or would you be sarcastic, Garny, old horse? No, better put it so that they’ll understand. Say that I consider that the manufacturer of the thing ought to be in Colney Hatch–if he isn’t there already–and that they are scoundrels for palming off a groggy machine of that sort on me.”
“The ceremony of opening the morning’s letters at Harrod’s ought to be full of interest and excitement to-morrow,” I said.
This dashing counter-stroke seemed to relieve Ukridge. His pessimism vanished. He seldom looked on the dark side of things for long at a time. He began now to speak hopefully of the future. He planned out ingenious improvements. Our fowls were to multiply so rapidly and consistently that within a short space of time Dorsetshire would be paved with them. Our eggs were to increase in size till they broke records and got three-line notices in the “Items of Interest” column in the /Daily Mail/. Briefly, each hen was to become a happy combination of rabbit and ostrich.
“There is certainly a good time coming,” I said. “May it be soon. Meanwhile, what of the local tradesmen?”
Ukridge relapsed once more into gloom.
“They are the worst of the lot. I don’t mind the London people so much. They only write, and a letter or two hurts nobody. But when it comes to butchers and bakers and grocers and fishmongers and fruiterers and what not coming up to one’s house and dunning one in one’s own garden,–well it’s a little hard, what?”