so far as my acquaintances were
concerned--these tittlings and jottings should be thus written with
water, but I have since made the discovery that my cloud of
disappointment is internally lined with precious silver.

XVIII

_Mr Jabberjee is a little over-ingenious in his excuses._

Since shaking the dust off my feet at Porticobello House, I have not
succeeded to pluck the courage for a personal interview with Miss
JESSIMINA, and my correspondence, duly forwarded per Mr BHOOBONE LALL
JALPANYBHOY, of Highbury, has consisted mainly of abject excuses for
non-attendance on plea of over-study for Bar Exam, and total incapacity
to journey due to excessive disorderliness in stomach department.

This, unhappily, at length inspired her with the harrowing dread that I
was on the point of being launched into the throes of eternity, if not
already as dead as Death's door-nail, and so, with feminine want of
reflection, she performed a hurried pilgrimage to Highbury.

Now, whether on account of the beetleheadedness of a domestic, or Baboo
JALPANYBHOY'S incompetency in the art of equivocation, I am not to
say--but the sequel of her inquiries was the unshakable conviction that
I had not struck root in the habitation from which my letters were
ostensibly addressed.

And in a subsequently forwarded letter she did reproach me pathetically
with my duplicity, and accused me of being a fickle--by which I was so
unspeakably cut up that I abstained from the condescension of a
rejoinder.

Next I became the involuntary recipient of another letter in more
intemperate style, menacing me that with a hook or a crook, she would
dislodge me from the loophole in which I was snugly established, and
that several able-bodied boarders were the hue of a full cry in pursuit.

Since Hereford Road is in dangerous proximity to Ladbroke Grove, I was
sitting tight in my apartments on receipt of this grave intelligence,
with funk in my heart, and the Unknown hovering above me, when my young
friend HOWARD ALLBUTT-INNETT, Esq., arrived with his bicycle, like a god
on a machine, and perceiving the viridity of my countenance, inquired
sympathetically what was up.

At first, being mindful of the excessive liveliness with which he had
bantered my residence in a boarding-house of such mediocre pretensions,
I was naturally disinclined to reveal that I was in the plight of troth
with the proprietress's daughter; but eventually I overcame my coyness,
and