scent than senile in physical appearance I was vastly impressed by the offhanded cocksurety of his manner.
My friend Howard introduced me, and exhibited my doleful predicament in the shell of a nut, whereupon Mr Smartle jauntily pronounced it to be the common garden breach of promise, but that we had better all repair to the First Avenue Hotel and lunch, and talk the affair over afterwards.
Which we did in the smoking-room after lunch, with coffee, liqueurs, and cigars, &c., for which I had to pay, as a Tommy Dod, and the odd man out of pocket.
Mr Smartle, after listening attentively to my narrative, said that I certainly seemed to him to have let myself into the deuced cavity of a hole by so publicly proclaiming my engagement, but that my status as an oriental foreigner, and the fact I had asserted—viz., that my promise was extorted from me by compulsion and sheer physical funkiness—might pull me through, unless the plaintiff were of superlative loveliness (which, fortunately, is by no means the case).
He added, that we had better engage Witherington, Q.C., as he was notoriously the crossest examiner at the Common Bar.
But to this I opposed the sine qua non that I am to have the sole control of my case in court, and reap the undivided kudos, assuring him that I should be able to cross-examine all witnesses
