It was Ukridge. Ukridge, confound him, with my dress-clothes fitting him so perfectly and with such unwrinkled smoothness that he might have stepped straight out of one of Ouida’s novels. Until that moment I had never fully realized the meaning of the expression “faultless evening dress.” With a passionate cry I leaped from my seat, and, accompanied by a rich smell of camphor, bounded for the stairs. Like Hamlet on a less impressive occasion, I wanted to slay this man when he was full of bread, with all his crimes, broad-blown, as flush as May, at drinking, swearing, or about some act that had no relish of salvation in it. “But, laddie,” said Ukridge, backed into a corner of the lobby apart from the throng, “be reasonable.” I cleansed my bosom of a good deal of that perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart. “How could I guess that you would want the things? Look at it from my position, old horse. I knew you, laddie, a good true friend who would be delighted to lend a pal his dress-clothes any time when he didn’t need them himself, and as you weren’t there when I called, I couldn’t ask you, so I naturally simply borrowed them. It was all just one of those little misunderstandings which can’t be helped. And, as it luckily turns out, you had a spare suit, so everything was all right, after all.” “You don’t think this poisonous fancy dress is mine, do you?” “Isn’t it?” said Ukridge, astonished. “It belongs to Bowles. He lent it to me.” “And most extraordinarily well you look in it, laddie,” said Ukridge. “Upon my Sam, you look like a duke or something.” “And smell like a second-hand clothes-store.” “Nonsense, my dear old son, nonsense. A mere faint suggestion of some rather pleasant antiseptic. Nothing more. I like it. It’s invigorating. Honestly, old man, it’s really remarkable what an air that suit gives you. Distinguished. That’s the word I was searching for. You look distinguished. All the girls are saying so. When you came in just now to speak to me, I heard one of them whisper ‘Who is it?’ That shows you.” “More likely ‘What is it?’” “Ha, ha!” bellowed Ukridge, seeking to cajole me with sycophantic mirth. “Dashed good! Deuced good! Not ‘Who is it?’ but ‘What is it?’ It beats me how you think of these things. Golly, if I had a brain like yours——But now, old son, if you don’t mind, I really must be getting back to poor little Dora. She’ll be wondering what has become of me.” The significance of these words had the effect of making me forget my just wrath for a moment. “Are you here with that girl you took to the theatre the other afternoon?” “Yes. I happened to win a trifle on the Derby, so I thought it would be the decent thing to ask her out for an evening’s pleasure. Hers is a grey life.” “It must be, seeing you so much.”