Swift, some comedies by a gentleman named Ibsen, and a couple of novels
by two gentlemen named George ------. But there! you don't know one
book from another! The fourth shelf from the top on the right-hand
side."

As the girl did so she looked over her hand at me, and lifted her
eyebrows very slightly.

THE GREAT CHANGE

My uncle had been hectic all day. I knew and dreaded what was coming,
and said nothing that by any chance could lead up to it.

He absent-mindedly tipped the emu sixpence. Then we came to the wart
hog.

"A bachelor," he said, meditatively, scratching the brute's back.

I hastily felt for a saving topic in the apprehensive darkness of my
mind, and could find none.

"I expect I shall be married in October," said my uncle. Then,
sighing: "The idyll of my engagement was short-lived."

It was out. Now, the day--my last idle day with my poor uncle--was a
hideous wreck. All the topics he had fluttered round vanished, and,
cold and awful, there loomed over us the one great topic.

"What do you _think_ of marriage, George?" said my uncle, after a
pause, prodding the wart hog suddenly.

"That's your privilege," said I. "Married men don't dare to think of
it. Bigamy."

"Privilege! Is it such a headlong wreck of one's ideals as they say?"
said my uncle. "Is that dreamland furniture really so unstable in use?"

"Of course," said I, "it's different from what one expects. But it
seems to be worse for the other party. At least to judge from the
novels they engender in their agony."

"So far as I can see," he proceeded, "what happens is very similar to a
thing a scientific chap was explaining to me the other day. There are
some little beasts in the sea called ascidians, and they begin life as
cheerful little tadpole things, with waggling tails and big expressive
eyes. They move freely about hither and thither, and often travel vast
distances in an adventurous way. Then what he called metamorphosis
begins. The little tadpole waggles his way to a rock and fixes himself
head downward. Then he undergoes the oddest changes, becomes indeed a
mere vegetative excrescence on the stone, secretes a lot of tough muck
round himself, and is altogether lost to free oceanic society. He
loses the cheerful tail, loses most of his brain, loses his bright
expressive eye."

"The bother of it," said I, "is that very often the wandering
expressive eye is not lost in the human metamorphosis."

"Put