ly love at first sight. There was no doubt of his intentions. As
soon as he had met her he was quite frank about it. "I intend," he said,
"to ask her to be my wife."

"When?" I asked; "right away?"

"No," he said, "I want first to fit myself to be worthy of her."

So he went into moral training to fit himself. He taught in a Sunday
school for six weeks, till he realised that a man has no business in
Divine work of that sort without first preparing himself by serious
study of the history of Palestine. And he felt that a man was a cad to
force his society on a girl while he is still only half acquainted with
the history of the Israelites. So Juggins stayed away. It was nearly two
years before he was fit to propose. By the time he _was_ fit, the girl
had already married a brainless thing in patent leather boots who didn't
even know who Moses was.

Of course Juggins fell in love again. People always do. And at any rate
by this time he was in a state of moral fitness that made it
imperative.

So he fell in love--deeply in love this time--with a charming girl,
commonly known as the eldest Miss Thorneycroft. She was only called
eldest because she had five younger sisters; and she was very poor and
awfully clever and trimmed all her own hats. Any man, if he's worth the
name, falls in love with that sort of thing at first sight. So, of
course, Juggins would have proposed to her; only when he went to the
house he met her next sister: and of course she was younger still; and,
I suppose, poorer: and made not only her own hats but her own blouses.
So Juggins fell in love with her. But one night when he went to call,
the door was opened by the sister younger still, who not only made her
own blouses and trimmed her own hats, but even made her own tailor-made
suits. After that Juggins backed up from sister to sister till he went
through the whole family, and in the end got none of them.

Perhaps it was just as well that Juggins never married. It would have
made things very difficult because, of course, he got poorer all the
time. You see after he sold out his last share in his last business he
bought with it a diminishing life annuity, so planned that he always got
rather less next year than this year, and still less the year after.
Thus, if he lived long enough, he would starve to death.

Meantime he has become a quaint-looking elderly man, with coats a little
too short and trousers a little above his boots--like a boy. His fac