For this I was paid the same wages as an engine-driver; in ten or fifteen years, however, if I behaved myself, I would become a partner and take a share in the spoils. But my life at the time was illuminated with a more pressing excitement: I was going to be married.

Marriage is as much of an obligation for a young doctor as celibacy for a Roman Catholic priest. A medical bachelor is unpopular with the patients, except for visits to eligible daughters, and as even these are now obtainable on the National Health he is a frank financial liability to the practice. My principal had no intention of losing his patients through marital hesitation on the part of his young assistant, and after he had made this as plain as possible he asked his wife to apply a woman's practical mind to the problem and set about finding me a bride.

She procured the daughter of a town councillor. She was a girl called Wendy, a blonde, but of the arid sort, like the stubble in a wheat-field after a hot harvest. Her position in local society made it impossible for me to escape: once the town saw what my principal's wife was up to, Wendy and I were mated as firmly as two rats put in the same cage in the biological laboratory.

We became engaged. The wedding approached with the speed of an early winter.

I suppose, looking back on it, there was good reason for my subconscious to slip into disorder, like a wrecked gear-box in an overdriven car. Wendy was a nice girl. She was well educated, and could talk about things like trigonometry and economics. But she had her defects. Her voice was as dull and authoritative as a Salvation Army drum, she walked like an overloaded wheelbarrow, and she had a figure like a stook of corn. I began to suffer an attack of _terror celebans,_ or bachelor's panic.