Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/251

 The bride, rejecting the proffered assistance of the groom, was assisted into the carriage by her father, and departed, evidently full of misgivings as to her chance of future happiness in the society of such a heartless monster as her husband had just shown himself to be!

Skittles has been an "absent friend" himself at that house since then.

But I am not getting on with my pathetic story.

"Do not be late with it," our editor had said. "Let me have it by the end of August, certain. I mean to be early with the Christmas number this time. We didn't get it out till October last year, you know. I don't want the Clipper to be before us again!"

"Oh, that will be all right," I had answered, airily. "I shall soon run that off. I've nothing much to do this week. I'll start it at once."

So, as I went home, I cast about in my mind for a pathetic subject to work on. But not a pathetic idea could I think of. Comic fancies crowded in upon me, until my brain began to give way under the strain of holding them; and, if I had not calmed myself down with a last week's Punch, I should, in all probability, have gone off in a fit.

"Oh, I'm evidently not in the humour for pathos," I said to myself. "It is no use trying to force it. I've got plenty of time. I will wait till I feel sad."

But as the days went on, I merely grew more and more cheerful. By the middle of August, matters were becoming serious. If I could not, by some means or other, contrive to get myself into a state of the blues during the next week or ten days, there would be nothing in the Christmas number of the Weekly Journal to make the British public wretched, and its repuationreputation [sic] as a