TEE WISDOM OF LOVE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 166, 13 July 1907, Page 11

TEE WISDOM OF LOVE.

A HALF-MIXTJTE STORY. you."' Then she sobbed upon his exceedingly well-cut shooting coat, and he felt the lump in his rhroat would suffocate him, and swere inwardly to wear looser collars. They neither of them had any money. Therefore to marry would have been madness, and he was uot mad, neither was her \ mother, and so they kissed aud parted. lie left England to make a fortune "elsewhere," but somehow he found so many other people "elsewhere ,, doing the same thins. He never succeeded, and ehe went home to dance and flirt—in fact, carry out the usual prescription for mending a broken heart. Years after they met at a railway station. She was still slim and charming, but —he shuddered. What a dreadful little husband. What fat, uninteresting children. She saw him— sc-mekow the young girl with whom h.e was walkiag_ o f course— his wife—made open recognition Impossible. . As they passed her standing i n the centre of that group of fat children the girl giggied. It hurt her very much. Again they met, bat !ong years had glided by—suc-h short years to look back upon whru they were over. She was old nor,, with white hair, yet she was pretty still' Ue was thin and wrinkled, like a Normandy pippin, but though he had not made much money in the time that was over, he had gotten wisdom. Purely by chance he called at the boardinghouse where his old love was staying. She was alone in the sitting-room, and her cheeks crimsoned with agitation. "And where is your husband, Mrs. V I declare 1 don't know your name, Kate.' - But she looked at him and did not answer. Then he concluded the ugly little husband was no more. •'But the children. How many have you —five or six? I fancy some must be grown up by now.' . The white-haired woman stared at him In bewilderment. "My children,"' she faltered. Then s&e remembered the girl who uud giggled, ami said with dignity: "And where is your ! wife?" ~ t

"Rless my soul, I haven't a wife." So that odious girl was dead. She tried to look decorously sorry. "Are you staying hero alone?" asked lie, bluntly enough, and she aU6wered sadly, with a shake of her pretty whits head: "I am always alone." "What, all dead?" "What do you mean? Who axe dead?" "Why, your husband aud children." "I never had children or a husband," she laughed, a little hysterically. "I saw you with Ihcm at the station." "I saw you there with your young wife," she retorted. ... "That you didn't. I was with Lizzie, my niece. Fancy that minx my wife." •'I was waiting to sec a friend off by train. Fancy that fat family my children, and that good little man my hnsband." And so, although they had missed the golden" days of life, because they were old and alone, and had loved each other iv their yonth, they took courage to lace what remained of .the years, and to live them cmt together. . . - -— — -• - --.