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?"