ught up by Aunts in a Vicarage, and would also become a Decadent.

During vac. the Decadents would sometimes meet in Town, and See Life--a
singularly uninteresting and unattractive side of Life (much more like
Death), and the better men among them--better because of a little
sincerity and pluck--would achieve a petty and rather sordid "adventure"
perhaps.

Augustus had no head for Mathematics and no gift for Languages, while
his Classics had always been a trifle more than shaky. History bored
him--so he read Moral Philosophy.

There is a somewhat dull market for second-hand and third-class Moral
Philosophy in England, so Augustus took his to India. In the first
college that he adorned his classes rapidly dwindled to nothing, and the
College Board dispensed with the services of Augustus, who passed on to
another College in another Province, leaving behind him an odour of
moral dirtiness, debt, and decadence. Quite genuine decadence this time,
with nothing picturesque about it, involving doctors' bills, alimony,
and other the fine crops of wild-oat sowing.

At Gungapur he determined to "settle down," to "turn over a new leaf,"
and laid a good space of paving-stone upon his road to reward.

He gave up the morning nip, docked the number of cocktails, went to bed
before two, took a little gentle exercise, met Mrs. Pat Dearman--and
(like Mr. Robin Ross-Ellison, General Miltiades Murger and many another)
succumbed at once.

Mrs. Pat Dearman had come to India (as Miss Cleopatra Diamond Brighte)
to see her brother, Dickie Honor Brighte, at Gungapur, and much
interested to see, also, a Mr. Dearman whom, in his letters to her,
Dickie had described as "a jolly old buster, simply full of money, and
fairly spoiling for a wife to help him blew it in." She had not only
seen him but had, as she wrote to acidulous Auntie Priscilla at the
Vicarage, "actually married him after a week's acquaintance--fancy!--the
last thing in the world she had ever supposed ... etc." (Auntie
Priscilla had smiled in her peculiarly unpleasant way as the artless
letter enlarged upon the strangeness of her ingenuous niece's marrying
the rich man about whom her innocent-minded brother had written so
much.)

Having thoroughly enjoyed a most expensive and lavish honeymoon, Mrs.
Pat Dearman had settled down to make her good husband happy, to have a
good time and to do any amount of Good to other people--especially to
young men--who have so many temptations,