"Father—"
"And let me tell you, Mr. Ukridge, that I consider your opinions poisonous. Poisonous, sir. And you know nothing whatever about the subject, sir. I don't wish to see you or to speak to you again. Understand that, sir. Our acquaintance began to-day, and it will cease to-day. Good night to you. Come, Phyllis, me dear. Mrs. Ukridge, good night."
Mr. Chase, when he spoke of four-point-seven guns, had known what he was talking about.
DIES IRÆ
hy is it, I wonder, that stories of Retribution calling at the wrong address strike us as funny instead of pathetic? I myself had been amused by them many a time. In a book which I had just read, a shop woman, being vexed with an omnibus conductor, had thrown a superannuated orange at him. It had found its billet not on him, but on a perfectly inoffensive spectator. The missile, we are told, "'it a young copper full in the hyeball." I had enjoyed this when I read it, but now that fate had arranged a precisely similar situation, with myself in the rôle of the young copper, the fun of the thing appealed to me not at all.
It was Ukridge who was to blame for the professor's regrettable explosion and departure, and he ought by all laws of justice to have suffered for it. As it was, I was the only person materially affected. It did not matter to Ukridge. He did not care twopence one way or the other. If the professor were friendly, he was willing to talk to him by the hour on any subject, pleasant or unpleasant. If, on the other hand, he wished to have nothing more to do with us, it did not worry him. He was content to let him go. Ukridge was a self-sufficing person.