dise, I shall confess to some disappointment, seeing that it was exclusively reserved to military masculines—the more highly educated civilian class of Baboos being left out of the cold altogether! Nor am I in love with a future state in which there is so much dancing up and down lofty flights of stairs with terpsichorean energy, and manœuvring in companies and circles with members of the softer sex. As a philosophical conception of disembodied existence, it is undeniably deficient in repose, though perhaps good enough for ordinary fighting chaps!
I spent a rapturous and ripping evening, however, greatly owing to the condescension of Miss Wee-Wee, who exhibited such entertainment at my comments that I left under the confident persuasion that I was infallibly to be the favoured swain.
On returning to Hereford Road, I found a last letter from Jessimina, beseeching me, for the sake of "Old Langsyne," to meet her on the following evening at Westbourne Park Station, and mentioning that certain events had occurred to change her views, and she was now only desirous for an amicable arrangement.
Accordingly, perceiving that I had no longer any reason to dread such an encounter, and not wishing her to peak and pine through my unkindness, I wrote at once accepting the rendezvous.
When I duly turned up, lo and behold! I
