about-to-be-shabby

Updated: May 18, 2025

And then, for the first time, it struck me that an about-to-be-shabby gentleman with a beggarly two hundred a year, ought not, in spite of his quarterings, to be contemplating marriage with a wealthy woman who kept an electric brougham. The thought hit me like a stone in the midriff. What on earth was to be done? My pride rose up like the deux ex machina in the melodrama and forbade the banns.

William John Locke - Simon the Jester