"Do you mind explaining?" I asked.
"It explains itself," he answered disgustedly, referring to the card. I picked it up. It was a printed communication, in which somebody, whose name I forget, requested the pleasure of George's presence at the marriage of his daughter Something to Mr. Somebodyelse.
I read it aloud. "What's wrong with that?" I asked. "Were you in love with her yourself?"
"I was not," said George shortly. "To the best of my knowledge I have never even set eyes on the wretched girl, and never want to. My implication in the affair rests solely on my having once been at school with the bridegroom."
"Then what more touching than that he should desire the presence of his old comrade at such a crisis?"
"Presence!" began George bitterly. "If they'd said——"
I stopped him. "I know the pun," I said quickly, "and am no longer capable of being amused at it. So that is the ground of your complaint. I must say, George, that I regard this as a little mean of you."
"You may," answered George. "That shows you don't realise the facts. If you were in my position you wouldn't talk like that. Why, look at it," he went on, warming to his subject, "here am I, a bachelor nearing fifty, with an income, secure certainly, but by no means lavish; and what do we find? Scarcely a day goes by without my receiving some more or less veiled demand from persons without a shadow of claim!
"Relatives," pursued George, "one, of course, expects. I have myself five elder sisters, all of them comfortably married with my assistance. Pianos or dinner-sets or whatever it happened to be," explained George. "I make no complaint there. Not even though in these cases the initial outlay was only the beginning. I am by now seventeen times an uncle. A pleasant position at first, but repetition stales it. The expense of that alone is becoming appalling. Why on earth didn't Henry VIII. or somebody institute a bounty for uncles?"
"It can't be so bad as all that."