mbered
that Jona had rather seemed to encourage him in his idea of writing
his biography. He planned it all out in his mind. He pictured himself
wrongly suspected, loathed by everybody (except Jona), suffering
horribly, terribly ill. He thoroughly enjoyed it.

He enjoyed it so much that he felt he had to tell Mabel about it. He
did.

"Mabel," he said, "have you ever realized that under certain
circumstances the most awful things would happen to me that ever
befell the hero of a melodrama? Just take the train of events. Effie
has an illegitimate child. She writes and tells you about it."

"But she wouldn't," said Mabel. "She was with me for a fortnight, and
I always kept her in her place."

"Well, she refuses to say who the father is."

"Why?" asked Mabel.

"Because the story can't possibly go on if she doesn't. Please don't
interrupt me again until I've finished. Effie has no money. She goes
to see her father, who will take her in, but not the child. It's an
accepted convention that the unmarried mother must be parted from her
child. So Effie and the baby turn up here. I say that they shall stay.
You say that in that case you'll go, which you do, having previously
dismissed Dot and Dash. In consequence, everybody in this neighborhood
cuts me, I am turned out of my business, and as the dates agree, I am
believed to be the father of the child. Effie has the housework to do
as well as the baby to look after, and in consequence, I am horribly
neglected. The handle of the front door is not polished, and when an
old friend comes down from London to see me, I have nothing to give
him for lunch except cold meat and a fruit tart that is no longer in
its first youth. So I take a week-end at Brighton without Effie. She
cleans my straw hat with oxalic acid, which I have bought for her. I
throw away the hat and buy another. While I am at Brighton she kills
herself and the baby with what is left of the oxalic acid. At the
inquest I am unable to say anything except 'Look here,' am severely
censured by the coroner's jury, and nearly lynched by the crowd
outside. I go back to the house and find a letter on the clock, which
entirely clears me and tells me that the father of the child is the
son of Dobson, the dirty dog who sneaked my partnership. So I go to
see Dobson and find that he has just got the news that his son is
dead. I therefore burn Effie's letter so as to get the sole evidence
of my innocence out of the way, and then