astounding precipitancy of my next move. I have dwelt enough upon the demoralizing effect of afternoon tea to establish the hypothesis that I could not have been wholly, or even in part, responsible.
In secondary parenthesis, I may say that I was from infancy a child who would never take a dare. On more occasions than I could now enumerate I have wet my feet, or rent my clothes asunder, or barked my shins against an insurmountable precipice, in the unique attempt to cram an imputation of my cowardice down the throat of a companion. This spirit survived my arrival at maturity. For example, I no more had a reasonable cause for plunging into the morass or up the steeps of matrimony than I had had for braving the infinitely less perilous swamps and precipices of my boyhood, but the suggestion that it was beyond my power to do so was enough.
“Miss Berrith,” said I, “there is a side to my character which you have never seen — a
