_Que faire?_--except to explain that my melancholy bereavement must have entirely slipped off my memory, and that in any case it had no logical connection with the matter in hand.
Then Mrs MANKLETOW inquired, would I, or would I not, marry her illused child? and stated that all she wished for was a plain answer.
I replied that it was a very natural and moderate desire, and I was prepared to gratify it at once by the plain answer of--_Not on any account._
Whereupon Mr SOLOMONS stepped forward and politely handed me a folded paper, and, observing that he thought there was no need to protract the interview, he lifted his hat and went off with the ladies, leaving myself upon a bench endeavouring to get the sense of the official document into my baffled and bewildered nob.
[Illustration: "A ROYAL COMMAND FROM THE QUEEN-EMPRESS."]
Eventually, I gathered that it was a Royal command from the Queen-Empress, backed by the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, that I was to enter my appearance in an action at the suit of JEMIMA MANKLETOW for a claim of damages for having breached my promise to marry!
No matter! Pugh! Fiddle-de-dee! Never mind! Who cares?
Having successfully passed Exam, and been called to the Bar, I am now an _amicus curiæ_, and the friend in Court.
I shall enter my appearance in the forensic costume of wig and gown.
What will be the price of the plaintiff's pleadings _then_, Madams?
_Mr Jabberjee places himself in the hands of a solicitor--with certain reservations._
I concluded my foregoing instalment, narrating my service of a writ for breaching a promise of marriage, with a spirited outburst of _insouciance_ and devilmaycarefulness.
But such courage of a Dutch evaporated deplorably on closer perusal of the said writ, which contained the peremptory mandate that I was to enter my appearance within the incredibly short notice of eight days, or the judgment would be given in my absence!
Now it was totally out of the question that I was to prepare a long complicated defence, and have the requisite witnesses, and also perfect myself in the customs and etiquettes of Common Law Procedure, all in such a ridiculously brief period; and yet, if I remained _perdu_ with a hidden head, I could not hope for even the minimum of justice, since, heigh-ho! _les absents ont toujours tort_. So that I shed blistering and scalding tears like a spanked child, to find myself confronting such a devil of a deep sea, and my day was dismal and my night a nonentity, until, by a great piece of potluck, on going up the next morning to the library of my Inn, I espied my young friend HOWARD in the compound, busily employed in a lawn tennis game.