“What made him change his mind?” I asked.
“The wobbling, vacillating hell-hound! I always had a feeling that there was something wrong with that man. He had a nasty, shifty eye. You’ll bear me out, laddie, in that? Haven’t I spoken to you a hundred times about his shifty eye?”
“Certainly. Why did he change his mind?”
“Didn’t I always say he wasn’t to be trusted?”
“Repeatedly. What made him change his mind?”
Ukridge laughed with a sharp bitterness that nearly cracked the window-pane. His collar leaped like a live thing. Ukridge’s collar was always a sort of thermometer that registered the warmth of his feelings. Sometimes, when his temperature was normal, it would remain attached to its stud for minutes at a time; but the slightest touch of fever sent it jumping up, and the more he was moved the higher it jumped.
“When I knew Hank out in Canada,” he said, “he had the constitution of an ox. Ostriches took his correspondence course in digestion. But directly he comes into a bit of money——Laddie,” said Ukridge earnestly, “when I’m a rich man, I want you to stand at my elbow and watch me very carefully. The moment you see signs of degeneration speak a warning word. Don’t let me coddle myself. Don’t let me get fussy about my health. Where was I? Oh yes. Directly this man comes into a bit of money he gets the idea that he’s a sort of fragile, delicate flower.”
“I shouldn’t have thought so from what you were telling me the other night.”
“What happened the other night was the cause of all the trouble. Naturally he woke up with a bit of a head.”
“I can quite believe it.”