The hardest work had been the fixing of the wire-netting.  This was the department of the Hired Man and myself, Ukridge holding himself proudly aloof.  While Beale and I worked ourselves to a fever in the sun, the senior partner of the firm sat on a deck-chair in the shade, offering not unkindly criticism and advice and from time to time abusing his creditors, who were numerous.  For we had hardly been in residence a day before he began to order in a vast supply of necessary and unnecessary things, all on credit.  Some he got from the village, others from neighbouring towns.  Axminster he laid heavily under contribution.  He even went as far afield as Dorchester.  He had a persuasive way with him, and the tradesmen seemed to treat him like a favourite son.  The things began to pour in from all sides,—­groceries, whisky, a piano, a gramophone, pictures.  Also cigars in great profusion.  He was not one of those men who want but little here below.

As regards the financial side of these transactions, his method was simple and masterly.  If a tradesman suggested that a small cheque on account would not be taken amiss, as one or two sordid fellows did, he became pathetic.

“Confound it, sir,” he would say with tears in his voice, laying a hand on the man’s shoulders in a wounded way, “it’s a trifle hard, when a gentleman comes to settle in your neighbourhood, that you should dun him for money before he has got the preliminary expenses about the house off his back.”  This sounded well, and suggested the disbursement of huge sums for rent.  The fact that the house had been lent him rent free was kept with some care in the background.  Having weakened the man with pathos, he would strike a sterner note.  “A little more of this,” he would go on, “and I’ll close my account.  Why, damme, in all my experience I’ve never heard anything like it!” Upon which the man would apologise, and go away, forgiven, with a large order for more goods.

By these statesmanlike methods he had certainly made the place very comfortable.  I suppose we all realised that the things would have to be paid for some day, but the thought did not worry us.

“Pay?” bellowed Ukridge on the only occasion when I ventured to bring up the unpleasant topic, “of course we shall pay.  Why not?  I don’t like to see this faint-hearted spirit in you, old horse.  The money isn’t coming in yet, I admit, but we must give it time.  Soon we shall be turning over hundreds a week, hundreds!  I’m in touch with all the big places,—­Whiteley’s, Harrod’s, all the nibs.  Here I am, I said to them, with a large chicken farm with all the modern improvements.  You want eggs, old horses, I said:  I supply them.  I will let you have so many hundred eggs a week, I said; what will you give for them?  Well, I’ll admit their terms did not come up to my expectations altogether, but we must not sneer at small prices at first.