"What is that, Bill?" sez I.

"The one what gets the title as soon as the one who is holding it,
dies, is the heir apparent, an' the one who gets the next chance is the
heir presumptive. It's a legal term an'--"

"Never mind explainin' it then," sez I, "If I was to live as long as
Methusleh, all I'd know about law would be that ignorance wasn't no
excuse for it; but what is a curat?"

"A curate is a sort of preacher," sez Bill.

"I thought it was some kind of a doctor. But what in thunder did you
mean when you said that gettin' engaged to the daughter of one was a
scrape?" sez I.

"Why, it wouldn't do for the heir presumptive to Clarenden, and a
possible claimant to Avondale, to get engaged to a person in that
station of life; he had to make up either to a heap of money or else a
big title; he simply had to marry a lady of quality," sez Bill.

"So he could contribute his share of epolepsy to the family collection,
I suppose," sez I.

"Well, James gets an awful callin' down," sez Bill, "an' he cuts loose
from the family an' goes to live in London, where he's a leftenant.
Richard Cleighton, his cousin, who is the heir presumptive, once
removed, sneaks down there an' comes back with the report that James is
married to Alice LeMoyne, a music-hall dancer."

"Jim swung purty wide in his taste for women, didn't he?" sez I.

"The upshot of it was," sez Bill, never heedin' me, "that they settled
with James, an' he lit out--his mother had died several years before.
About four years after, this Alice LeMoyne dies, an' on her deathbed
she confesses that she is the wife of Richard Cleighton an' helped to
put up the job on James to get him out of the way, as the heir apparent
didn't look like a long-liver, an' she thought she would like to be an
Erless, with a chance of being a Duchess even."

"An' you mean to tell me that this low-grade Dick Cleighton puts up
that job on Jim, just so he can beat him to the title?" sez I.

"Yes," sez Bill, "you see he was the heir presumptive, only once
removed."

"Well, if I'd had the job o' removin'," sez I, "once, would 'a' been
plenty."

"That put Richard out o' the runnin'," sez Bill, "Lord Wilfred, the
apparent, was livin' along all right, an' the old Earl had come to the
conclusion that when it came to a presumptive, he'd sooner have Jim; so
he turned the hose on Dick, an' started out to find Jim. Jim wrote 'em
from New York that he was goin' to South Africa, an' then he wr