from a cloudless sky, but it took more than sunshine to make Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge discard his mackintosh. He looked like an animated blob of mustard.

When the train rolled in, he was standing in solitary grandeur trying to light his pipe, but as I got out I perceived that he had been joined by a sad-looking man, who, from the rapid and earnest manner in which he talked and the vehemence of his gesticulations, appeared to be ventilating some theme on which he felt deeply. Ukridge was looking warm and harassed, and, as I approached, I could hear his voice booming in reply.

“My dear sir, my dear old horse, do be reasonable, do try to cultivate the big, broad flexible outlook——”

He saw me and broke away—not unwillingly; and, gripping my arm, drew me off along the platform. The sad-looking man followed irresolutely.

“Have you got the stuff, laddie?” enquired Ukridge, in a tense whisper. “Have you got it?”

“Yes, here it is.”

“Put it back, put it back!” moaned Ukridge in agony, as I felt in my pocket. “Do you know who that was I was talking to? Gooch, the grocer!”

“Goods supplied to the value of six pounds three and a penny?”

“Absolutely!”

“Well, now’s your chance. Fling him a purse of gold. That’ll make him look silly.”

“My dear old horse, I can’t afford to go about the place squandering my cash simply in order to make grocers look silly. That money is earmarked for Nickerson, my landlord.”

“Oh! I say, I think the six pounds three and a penny bird is following us.”

“Then for goodness’ sake, laddie, let’s get a move on! If that man knew we had twenty quid on us, our lives wouldn’t be safe. He’d make one spring.”

He hurried me out of the station and led the way up a shady lane that wound off through the fields, slinking furtively “like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once looked back walks on and turns no more his head, because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread.” As a matter of fact, the frightful fiend had given up the pursuit after the first few steps, and a moment later I drew this fact to Ukridge’s attention, for it was not the sort of day on 

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