"What! My dear old man, nobody minds a little thing like that. We
can't be stilted and formal. It's ever so much more friendly to relax
and be chummy."

Here we rejoined the others, and I was left with a leaden foreboding
of gruesome things in store. I knew what manner of man Ukridge was
when he relaxed and became chummy. Friendships of years' standing had
failed to survive the test.

For the time being, however, all went well. In his role of lecturer he
offended no one, and Phyllis and her father behaved admirably. They
received his strangest theories without a twitch of the mouth.

"Ah," the professor would say, "now is that really so? Very
interesting indeed."

Only once, when Ukridge was describing some more than usually original
device for the furthering of the interests of his fowls, did a slight
spasm disturb Phyllis's look of attentive reverence.

"And you have really had no previous experience in chicken-farming?"
she said.

"None," said Ukridge, beaming through his glasses. "Not an atom. But I
can turn my hand to anything, you know. Things seem to come naturally
to me somehow."

"I see," said Phyllis.