“I should have thought that would have ranked as one of Spencer’s three misfortunes. How do you come in?” “Why, my dear fellow, I’ve been having the devil of a time since he dropped out. The ass they sent me from the agency as a substitute is no good at all. Look at that!” He extended a shapely leg. “Do you call that a crease?” From the humble standpoint of my own bagginess, I should have called it an excellent crease, but he seemed thoroughly dissatisfied with it, so there was nothing to do but tell him to set his teeth and bear it like a man, and presently, the bell having rung for the three-thirty race, we parted. “Oh, by the way,” said Looney, as he left me, “are you going to be at the old Wrykinian dinner next week?” “Yes, I’m coming. So is Ukridge.” “Ukridge? Good Lord, I haven’t seen old Ukridge for years.” “Well, he will be there. And I expect he’ll touch you for a temporary loan. That will make your third misfortune.” Ukridge’s decision to attend the annual dinner of the Old Boys of the school at which he and I had been—in a manner of speaking—educated had come as a surprise to me; for, though the meal was likely to be well-cooked and sustaining, the tickets cost half a sovereign apiece, and it was required of the celebrants that they wear evening-dress. And, while Ukridge sometimes possessed ten shillings which he had acquired by pawning a dress-suit, or a dress-suit which he had hired for ten shillings, it was unusual for him to have the two things together. Still, he was as good as his word, and on the night of the banquet turned up at my lodgings for a preliminary bracer faultlessly clad and ready for the feast. Tactlessly, perhaps, I asked him what bank he had been robbing. “I thought you told me a week ago that money was tight,” I said. “It was tighter,” said Ukridge, “than these damned trousers. Never buy ready-made dress-clothes, Corky, my boy. They’re always unsatisfactory. But all that’s over now. I have turned the corner, old man. Last Saturday we cleaned up to an extraordinary extent at Sandown.” “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.”