here to-day. It's a little hard. Here am I, all eagerness and anxiety,
waiting to start an up-to-date chicken farm, and no fowls! I can't run
a chicken farm without fowls. If they don't come to-morrow, I shall
get after those people with a hatchet. There must be no slackness.
They must bustle about. After tea I'll show you the garden, and we'll
choose a place for a fowl-run. To-morrow we must buckle to. Serious
work will begin immediately after breakfast."

"Suppose," I said, "the fowls arrive before we're ready for them?"

"Why, then they must wait."

"But you can't keep fowls cooped up indefinitely in a crate."

"Oh, that'll be all right. There's a basement to this house. We'll let
'em run about there till we're ready for them. There's always a way of
doing things if you look for it. Organisation, my boy. That's the
watchword. Quiet efficiency."

"I hope you are going to let the hens hatch some of the eggs, dear,"
said Mrs. Ukridge. "I should love to have some little chickens."

"Of course. By all means. My idea," said Ukridge, "was this. These
people will send us fifty fowls of sorts. That means--call it forty-
five eggs a day. Let 'em . . . Well, I'm hanged! There's that dog
again. Where's the jug?"

But this time an unforeseen interruption prevented the manoeuvre being
the success it had been before. I had turned the handle and was about
to pull the door open, while Ukridge, looking like some modern and