“And what’s the moral?”
“Why, go in like a mighty, rushing wind! Bustle ’em! Don’t give ’em a moment’s rest or time to think or anything. Why, if I’d given Millie’s Aunt Elizabeth time to think, where should we have been? Not at Combe Regis together, I’ll bet. You heard that letter, and know what she thinks of me now, on reflection. If I’d gone slow and played a timid waiting-game, she’d have thought that before I married Millie, instead of afterwards. I give you my honest word, laddie, that there was a time, towards the middle of our acquaintance–after she had stopped mixing me up with the man who came to wind the clocks–when that woman ate out of my hand! Twice–on two separate occasions–she actually asked my advice about feeding her toy Pomeranian! Well, that shows you! Bustle ’em, laddie! Bustle ’em!”
“Ukridge,” I said, “you inspire me. You would inspire a caterpillar. I will go to the professor–I was going anyhow, but now I shall go aggressively. I will prise a father’s blessing out of him, if I have to do it with a crowbar.”
“That’s the way to talk, old horse. Don’t beat about the bush. Tell him exactly what you want and stand no nonsense. If you don’t see what you want in the window, ask for it. Where did you think of tackling him?”
“Phyllis tells me that he always goes for a swim before breakfast. I thought of going down to-morrow and waylaying him.”
“You couldn’t do better. By Jove!” said Ukridge suddenly. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, laddie. I wouldn’t do it for everybody, but I look on you as a favourite son. I’ll come with you, and help break the ice.”
“What!”
“Don’t you be under any delusion, old horse,” said Ukridge paternally. “You haven’t got an easy job in front of you and what you’ll need more than anything else, when you really get down to brass-tacks, is a wise, kindly man of the world at your elbow, to whoop you on when your nerve fails you and generally stand in your corner and see that you get a fair show.”
“But it’s rather an intimate business….”
“Never mind! Take my tip and have me at your side. I can say things about you that you would be too modest to say for yourself. I can plead your case, laddie. I can point out in detail all that the old boy will be missing if he gives you the miss-in-baulk. Well, that’s settled, then. About eight to-morrow morning, what? I’ll be there, my boy. A swim will do me good.”
CHAPTER XIX
ASKING PAPA
Reviewing the matter later, I could see that I made one or two blunders in my conduct of the campaign to win over Professor Derrick. In the first place, I made a bad choice of time and place. At the moment this did not strike me. It is a simple matter, I reflected, for a man to pass another by haughtily and without recognition, when they meet on dry land; but, when the said man, being it should be remembered, an indifferent swimmer, is accosted in the water and out of his depth, the feat becomes a hard one. It seemed to me that I should have a better chance with the professor in the water than out of it.
My second mistake–and this was brought home to me almost immediately –was in bringing Ukridge along. Not that I really brought him along; it was rather a case of being unable to shake him off. When he met me on the gravel outside the house at a quarter to eight on the following morning, clad in a dingy mackintosh which, swinging open, revealed a purple bathing-suit, I confess that my heart sank. Unfortunately, all my efforts to dissuade him from accompanying me were attributed by him to a pardonable nervousness–or, as he put it, to the needle.
“Buck up, laddie!” he roared encouragingly. “I had anticipated this. Something seemed to tell me that your nerve would go when it came to the point. You’re deuced lucky, old horse, to have a man like me at your side. Why, if you were alone, you wouldn’t have a word to say for yourself. You’d just gape at the man and yammer. But I’m with you laddie, I’m with you. If your flow of conversation dries up, count on me to keep the thing going.”