nscrupulous, interesting,
many-sided, I must despair of ever doing so. I'll suppose, however, that
I have not failed; and I will proceed to tell you, my most patient of
confidants, something of my personal relations with Cullingworth.

When I first made a casual acquaintance with him he was a bachelor. At
the end of a long vacation, however, he met me in the street, and told
me, in his loud-voiced volcanic shoulder-slapping way, that he had just
been married. At his invitation, I went up with him then and there to
see his wife; and as we walked he told me the history of his wedding,
which was as extraordinary as everything else he did. I won't tell it
to you here, my dear Bertie, for I feel that I have dived down too many
side streets already; but it was a most bustling business, in which the
locking of a governess into her room and the dyeing of Cullingworth's
hair played prominent parts. Apropos of the latter he was never quite
able to get rid of its traces; and from this time forward there was
added to his other peculiarities the fact that when the sunlight
struck upon his hair at certain angles, it turned it all iridescent and
shimmering.

Well, I went up to his lodgings with him, and was introduced to Mrs.
Cullingworth. She was a timid, little, sweet-faced, grey-eyed woman,
quiet-voiced and gentle-mannered. You had only to see the way in which
she looked at him to understand that she was absolutely under his
control, and that do what he might, or say what he might, it would
always be the best thing to her. She could be obstinate, too, in a
gentle, dove-like sort of way; but her obstinacy lay always in the
direction of backing up his sayings and doings. This, however, I was
only to find out afterwards; and at that, my first visit, she impressed
me as being one of the sweetest little women that I had ever known.

They were living in the most singular style, in a suite of four
small rooms, over a grocer's shop. There was a kitchen, a bedroom,
a sitting-room, and a fourth room, which Cullingworth insisted upon
regarding as a most unhealthy apartment and a focus of disease, though
I am convinced that it was nothing more than the smell of cheeses from
below which had given him the idea. At any rate, with his usual energy
he had not only locked the room up, but had gummed varnished paper over
all the cracks of the door, to prevent the imaginary contagion from
spreading. The furniture was the sparest possible. There were