their wings after the nuptial flight. And
their wives go round talking fashion articles, and calling them dear
old stupids, and flirting over teacups with the unmarried men, or
writing novelettes about the child-man, and living their own lives.
I've been an unmarried man and I know all about it. Every intelligent
woman now seems to want to live her own life when she is not engaged in
taking the child-man out into polite society, and trying to wean him
from alcohol and tobacco. However, this scarcely applies to me."

"Not now," I said. And he winced.

"I wonder how it feels. Most men go into this without knowing of the
change that hangs over them. But I am older. It would not be nice for
a caterpillar if he knew he was going to rip up all along his back in a
minute or so. Yet I could sympathise with such a caterpillar now.
Anyhow, George, I hope the change will be complete. I would not like
to undergo only a partial metamorphosis, and become a queer speckled
monster all spotted with bachelor habits. Yet I sometimes think I am
beyond the adolescent stage, and my habits rather deeply rooted.
Hitherto, I have always damned a little at braces and collars and
things like that. I wish I knew where one could pick up a few
admissible expletives. And I loaf about London all day sometimes
without any very clear idea of what I am after, telling chaps in
studios how to paint, and talking to leisurely barristers, and all that
kind of thing."

"_She_," I said, "will probably help you to conquer habits of that
sort."

"Yes, I dare say she will," said my uncle. "I forgot that for the
minute."

THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE

My uncle came to a stop outside a stationer's shop in Oxford-street.
When I saw what had caught his attention I reproached myself for my
thoughtlessness.

"Come," said I, "tell me what you think of--of representative
government."

"It's no good, George. You did the same thing at the cake shop. Do
you think I never saw the cake shop? Since this affair was settled I
think every shop I pass reminds me of it--even the gunsmith's. I never
suspected before how entirely retail trade turned on marriage--except,
perhaps, the second-hand book shops. The whole world seems a-marrying.

"It's queer," said he, "that a little while ago the thing that worried
me to the exclusion of everything else was the idea of being married,
and now it is so near it's entirely the getting married that upsets me.
I hav