CHAPTER Nineteen--I Become A Blighted Being.
When a young boy gets to be an old boy, when the hair is growing rather thin on the top of the old boy's head, and he has been tamed sufficiently to take a sort of chastened pleasure in allowing the baby to play with his watch-seals--when, I say, an old boy has reached this stage in the journey of life, he is sometimes apt to indulge in sportive remarks concerning his first love.
Now, though I bless my stars that it wasn't in my power to marry Miss Nelly, I am not going to deny my boyish regard for her nor laugh at it.

As long as it lasted it was a very sincere and unselfish love, and rendered me proportionately wretched.

I say as long as it lasted, for one's first love doesn't last forever.
I am ready, however, to laugh at the amusing figure I cut after I had really ceased to have any deep feeling in the matter.

It was then I took it into my head to be a Blighted Being.

This was about two weeks after the spectral appearance of Mr.Waldron.
For a boy of a naturally vivacious disposition the part of a blighted being presented difficulties.