Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/248

 Still, we had too much of these "absent friends," however comprehensive a body they may have been. Skittles overdid the business. We all think highly of our friends when they are absent,—more highly, as a rule, than we do of them when they are not absent. But we do not want to be always worrying about them. At a Christmas party, or a complimentary dinner to somebody, or at a shareholders' meeting, where you naturally feel good and sad, they are in place, but Skittles dragged them in at the most inappropriate seasons. Never shall I forget his proposing their health once at a wedding. It had been a jolly wedding. Everything had gone off splendidly, and everybody was in the best of spirits. The breakfast was over, and quite all the necessary toasts had been drunk. It was getting near the time for the bride and bridegroom to depart, and we were just thinking about collecting the rice and boots with which to finally bless them, when Skittles rose in his place, with a funereal expression on his countenance and a glass of wine in his hand.

I guessed what was coming in a moment. I tried to kick him under the table. I do not mean, of course, that I tried to kick him there altogether; though I am not at all sure whether, under the circumstances, I should not have been justified in going even to that length. What I mean is, that the attempt to kick him took place under the table.

It failed, however. True, I did kick somebody; but it evidently could not have been Skittles, for he remained