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.

"My idea was to do the thing on the slow but sure principle. That is
to say, take each bird singly and carry it to bed. It would have taken
some time, but there would have been no confusion. But you can imagine
that that sort of thing would not appeal to Stanley Featherstonehaugh!
He likes his manoeuvres to be on a large, dashing, Napoleonic scale.
He said, 'Open the yard gate and let the blighters come out into the
open; then sail in and drive them in mass formation through the back
door into the basement.' It was a great idea, but there was one fatal
flaw in it. It didn't allow for the hens scattering. We opened the