“The world’s worst, laddie, the world’s worst. She’s been steeped to the gills in literature ever since I can remember. They’ve just made her president of the Pen and Ink Club. As a matter of fact, it was her novels that did me in when I lived with her. She used to send me to bed with the beastly things and ask me questions about them at breakfast. Absolutely without exaggeration, laddie, at breakfast. It was a dog’s life, and I’m glad it’s over. Flesh and blood couldn’t stand the strain. Well, knowing my aunt, I don’t mind telling you that my heart bleeds for poor little Dora. I know what a foul time she has, and I feel a better, finer man for having given her this passing gleam of sunshine. I wish I could have done more for her.” “Well, you might have stood her tea after the theatre.” “Not within the sphere of practical politics, laddie. Unless you can sneak out without paying, which is dashed difficult to do with these cashiers watching the door like weasels, tea even at an A B C shop punches the pocket-book pretty hard, and at the moment I’m down to the scrapings. But I’ll tell you what, I don’t mind joining you in a cup, if you were thinking of it.” “I wasn’t.” “Come, come! A little more of the good old spirit of hospitality, old horse.” “Why do you wear that beastly mackintosh in mid-summer?” “Don’t evade the point, laddie. I can see at a glance that you need tea. You’re looking pale and fagged.” “Doctors say that tea is bad for the nerves.” “Yes, possibly there’s something in that. Then I’ll tell you what,” said Ukridge, never too proud to yield a point, “we’ll make it a whisky-and-soda instead. Come along over to the Criterion.” It was a few days after this that the Derby was run, and a horse of the name of Gunga Din finished third. This did not interest the great bulk of the intelligentsia to any marked extent, the animal having started at a hundred to three, but it meant much to me, for I had drawn his name in the sweepstake at my club. After a monotonous series of blanks stretching back to the first year of my membership, this seemed to me the outstanding event of the century, and I celebrated my triumph by an informal dinner to a few friends. It was some small consolation to me later to remember that I had wanted to include Ukridge in the party, but failed to get hold of him. Dark hours were to follow, but at least Ukridge did not go through them bursting with my meat. There is no form of spiritual exaltation so poignant as that which comes from winning even a third prize in a sweepstake. So tremendous was the moral uplift that, when eleven o’clock arrived, it seemed silly to sit talking in a club and still sillier to go to bed. I suggested spaciously that we should all go off and dress and resume the revels at my expense half an hour later at Mario’s, where, it being an extension night, there would be music and dancing till three. We scattered in cabs to our various homes.