loathes cricket. Perhaps I have disclosed enough concerning him.
Although the Vane-Basingwells have quite almost always married the
right people, the Honourable George was beyond question born queer.

Again, in the matter of marriage, he was difficult. His lordship,
having married early into a family of poor lifes, was now long a
widower, and meaning to remain so he had been especially concerned
that the Honourable George should contract a proper alliance. Hence
our constant worry lest he prove too susceptible out of his class.
More than once had he shamefully funked his fences. There was the
distressing instance of the Honourable Agatha Cradleigh. Quite all
that could be desired of family and dower she was, thirty-two years
old, a bit faded though still eager, with the rather immensely high
forehead and long, thin, slightly curved Cradleigh nose.

The Honourable George at his lordship's peppery urging had at last
consented to a betrothal, and our troubles for a time promised to be
over, but it came to precisely nothing. I gathered it might have been
because she wore beads on her gown and was interested in uplift work,
or that she bred canaries, these birds being loathed by the Honourable
George with remarkable intensity, though it might equally have been
that she still mourned a deceased fiance of her early girlhood, a
curate, I believe, whose faded letters she had preserved and would
read to the Honourable George at intimate moments, weeping bitterly
the while. Whatever may have been his fancied objection--that is the
time we disappeared and were not heard of for near a twelvemonth.

Wondering now I was how we should last until the next quarter's
allowance. We always had lasted, but each time it was a different way.
The Honourable George at a crisis of this sort invariably spoke of