The worst of my misfortunes came later and in this wise. The local correspondent of the opposition paper was a friend of Mr. Bubbleby, and one of his letters contained this absurd paragraph: "Foremost among the visitors is Mr. Mudsworth, C.E., the great Railway Engineer, who takes copious notes of all subjects of interest, and has been greatly impressed by the inventive genius of our worthy and accomplished Local Funds Engineer, and has promised to introduce his valuable inventions on all the railways in the Empire. A little bird also whispers that, at no distant date, the distinguished engineer and the younger daughter of our local inventor may be united in bonds more durable if possible than the patent carriages coupling which is destined to make the latter famous,"
The wretch probably thought this very neatly turned; but the editor, instead of cutting it out, appended a note to the effect that there must be some mistake, as Mr. Mudsworth, C.E., had been married for years, and that confusion had probably been caused by the presence at Ajaibgaum of a "pushing person from the office of our Ditch Street contemporary who bore the same name, but who was as ignorant of Engineering as of most other subjects on which he wrote at such tedious length."
I spent Christmas Day in treating my bruises, and in writing a long explanation to my chief of the Oracle. I wrote also to Mr. Bubbleby, and I had the satisfaction of being, to some extent, rehabilitated in his good graces. For, when the real Engineering Mudsworth was led up to the stand of models, he only said—"Ah, yes! Yes, very ingenious. Very ingenious," and resolutely declined the sheaves of papers that had been thrust upon me. The inventor felt that the Press had been a better friend to him than Science in power, and he forgave me. But I went no more to tea with the ladies at the Bubbleby bungalow, and the Lancashire man had the coast clear for himself.
So it was not a particularly merry Christmas, after all, that I spent at Ajaibgaum. And I do not think it was kind of Mr. Cheetham, two months later, to address me by name—enclosing postage stamps for two rupees—the notification of the "domestic occurrence" that united him for life to the fair Clara, Though he was an incult barbarian, he must have known that it is to the manager of a journal, and not to its literary staff, that communications of this kind should be addressed.
