"
Life's Handicap.
When I was telling you of the joke that The Worm played off on the
Senior Subaltern, I promised a somewhat similar tale, but with all
the jest left out. This is that tale:
Dicky Hatt was kidnapped in his early, early youth--neither by
landlady's daughter, housemaid, barmaid, nor cook, but by a girl so
nearly of his own caste that only a woman could have said she was
just the least little bit in the world below it. This happened a
month before he came out to India, and five days after his one-and-
twentieth birthday. The girl was nineteen--six years older than
Dicky in the things of this world, that is to say--and, for the
time, twice as foolish as he.
Excepting, always, falling off a horse there is nothing more fatally
easy than marriage before the Registrar. The ceremony costs less
than fifty shillings, and is remarkably like walking into a pawn-
shop. After the declarations of residence have been put in, four
minutes will cover the rest of the proceedings--fees, attestation,
and all.
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