We gazed at one another silently. There was no disguising the gravity of the news. Like the coming together of two uncongenial chemicals, this meeting of aunt with aunt must inevitably produce an explosion. And in that explosion would perish the hopes and dreams of two loving hearts.
“Oh, Stanley! What can we do?”
If the question had been directed at me, I should have been hard put to it to answer; but Ukridge, that man of resource, though he might be down, was never out.
“There is just one scheme. It occurred to me as I was sprinting along the Brompton Road. Laddie,” he proceeded, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder, “it involves your co-operation.”
“Oh, how splendid!” cried Millie.
It was not quite the comment I would have made myself. She proceeded to explain.
“Mr. Corcoran is so clever. I’m sure, if it’s anything that can be done, he will do it.”
This ruled me out as a potential resister. Ukridge I might have been able to withstand, but so potently had this girl’s spell worked upon me that in her hands I was as wax.
Ukridge sat down on the desk, and spoke with a tenseness befitting the occasion.
“It’s rummy in this life, laddie,” he began in moralising vein, “how the rottenest times a fellow goes through may often do him a bit of good in the end. I don’t suppose I have ever enjoyed any period of my existence less than those months I spent at my aunt’s house in Wimbledon. But mark the sequel, old horse! It was while going through that ghastly experience that I gained a knowledge of her habits which is going to save us now. You remember Dora Mason?”