“How very kind of you!” “No, no,” said Ukridge, modestly. “I have been so worried,” said Lady Lakenheath, “that I have scarcely been able to rest.” “Too bad!” “Last night I had a return of my wretched malaria.” At these words, as if he had been given a cue, Ukridge reached under his chair and produced from his hat, like some conjurer, a bottle that was own brother to the one he had left in my rooms. Even from where I sat I could read those magic words of cheer on its flaunting label. “Then I’ve got the very stuff for you,” he boomed. “This is what you want. Glowing reports on all sides. Two doses, and cripples fling away their crutches and join the Beauty Chorus.” “I am scarcely a cripple, Mr. Ukridge,” said Lady Lakenheath, with a return of her earlier bleakness. “No, no! Good heavens, no! But you can’t go wrong by taking Peppo.” “Peppo?” said Lady Lakenheath, doubtfully. “It bucks you up.” “You think it might do me good?” asked the sufferer, wavering. There was a glitter in her eye that betrayed the hypochondriac, the woman who will try anything once. “Can’t fail.” “Well, it is most kind and thoughtful of you to have brought it. What with worrying over Leonard——” “I know, I know,” murmured Ukridge, in a positively bedside manner. “It seems so strange,” said Lady Lakenheath, “that, after I had advertised in all the papers, someone did not find him.” “Perhaps someone did find him!” said Ukridge, darkly. “You think he must have been stolen?” “I am convinced of it. A beautiful parrot like Leonard, able to talk in six languages——” “And sing,” murmured Lady Lakenheath. “——_and_ sing,” added Ukridge, “is worth a lot of money. But don’t you worry, old—er—don’t you worry. If the investigations which I am conducting now are successful, you will have Leonard back safe and sound to-morrow.” “To-morrow?” “Absolutely to-morrow. Now tell me all about your malaria.” I felt that the time had come for me to leave. It was not merely that the conversation had taken a purely medical turn and that I was practically excluded from it; what was really driving me away was the imperative necessity of getting out in the open somewhere and thinking. My brain was whirling. The world seemed to have become suddenly full of significant and disturbing parrots. I seized my hat and rose. My hostess was able to take only an absent-minded interest in my departure. The last thing I saw as the door closed was Ukridge’s look of big-hearted tenderness as he leaned forward so as not to miss a syllable of his companion’s clinical revelations. He was not actually patting Lady Lakenheath’s hand and telling her to be a brave little woman, but short of that he appeared to be doing everything a man could do to show her that, rugged though his exterior might be, his heart was in the right place and aching for her troubles.