“We?”
“The firm. I told you I had become a sleeping-partner in a bookie’s business.”
“For Heaven’s sake! You don’t mean to say that it is really making money?”
“Making money? My dear old lad, how could it help making money? I told you from the first the thing was a gold-mine. Affluence stares me in the eyeball. The day before yesterday I bought half-a-dozen shirts. That’ll show you!”
“How much have you made?”
“In some ways,” said Ukridge, sentimentally, “I regret this prosperity. I mean to say, those old careless impecunious days were not so bad. Not so bad, Corky, old boy, eh? Life had a tang then. It was swift, vivid, interesting. And there’s always the danger that one may allow oneself to grow slack and enervated with wealth. Still, it has its compensations. Yes, on the whole I am not sorry to have made my pile.”
“How much have you made?” I asked again, impressed by this time. The fact of Ukridge buying shirts for himself instead of purloining mine suggested an almost Monte Cristo-like opulence.
“Fifteen quid,” said Ukridge. “Fifteen golden sovereigns, my boy! And out of one week’s racing! And you must remember that the thing is going on all the year round. Month by month, week by week, we shall expand, we shall unfold, we shall develop. It wouldn’t be a bad scheme, old man, to drop a judicious word here and there among the lads at this dinner to-night, advising them to lodge their commissions with us. Isaac O’Brien is the name of the firm, 3 Blue Street, St. James’s. Telegraphic address, ‘Ikobee, London.’ and our representative attends all the recognised meetings. But don’t mention my connection with the firm. I don’t want it generally known, as it might impair my social standing. And now, laddie, if we don’t want to be late for this binge, we had better be starting.”
Ukridge, as I have recorded elsewhere, had left school under something of a cloud. Not to put too fine a point on it, he had been expelled for breaking out at night to attend the local fair, and it was only after many years of cold exclusion that he had been admitted to the pure-minded membership of the Old Boys’ Society.
Nevertheless, in the matter of patriotism he yielded to no one.