THE BARON WHO BOTHERED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 96, 24 April 1931, Page 15 (Supplement)

THE BARON WHO BOTHERED.

(By NORMAN HUNTER.)

(All Eights Reserved.)

Moving day is always awful. Bat the day Baron and Baroness Boathwaze moved into a new castle was extra specially and unreasonably awful. There was such a lot of furniture to move, and it was such beautiful and big and baronial sort of furniture too. The baron was nearly beside himself with anxiety in case one of the moving men dropped something and quite beside everyone else, one after the other, telling them, "Mind that chair. Be carcful with that table, it was a present from my auntie. Look where you're going with that jewel chest, I made it myself." He would very much rather have moved all the things himself, would the baron, only they were too many for him and too heavy and besides it would have been too unbaronial. And what was tlic baroness doing? Was she seeing that the linen was packed properly or that the carpets were being rolled up the right way? Not she. "What's the use of being a baroness if you don't do as you like?" she would say. So she was sitting on

the piano stool reading an absolutely thrilling book. And she was so deep in her book she didn't hear the men say they wanted to move the stool, so they had to take it out and put it in the van with her still on it. And when they pot to the other castle a rather newish moving man, who wasn't used to baronesses, carried her out and put her iu the garden thinking she was a sundial or something. But she just kept on reading and reading, and when it began to be too dark out in the garden to see she was thinking so much about the book and so little about what she was doing that when she went indoors to get some tea ready she put a loaf of bread on the fire and started spreading butter on the kettle. Just then the baron came out of the pantry where he'd been looking to see if there were enough hooks to hang the best cups on. "The men haven't been to put the gas and the water on," he said, writing a note on his shirt cuff that there were three more hooks wanted in the pantry. "Then let them have been immediatelv, please," said thi baroness forgetting all about the tea anyway, "I am going upstairs to have a bath," "I'll <*o and put the gas and the water on myself," said the baron, "it's quite easy. You just have to join up some little pipes to each other." But the baroness ha.'l gone upstairs still reading her book and trod on two moving men who were putting the stair carpet down. "People who wait for men to come and do things are silly," said the baron to himself as he went down to the cellai to join up the little pipes. "Why putting the gas on and the water on is as easy as falling down stairs." Just then his foot slipped and he fell down the cellar stairs and found it rather hard. But he soon got up and found the little pipes and joined them up though there weie rather more of tliem than he expected and one or two twiddly bits he didn t understand. He ought fiot to have done it, of course, but you know what barons are. r " "Well, that was soon done," he said, "Now I shall go. upstairs and light the pas, then I can see to putting sonic carpet:; down before the moving men pet back from tea." So lie went downstairs and turned the gas on. Instantly a *;hower of water came spouting and gushing out of the gu& burners. It poured down him and over him like an unlikely shower bath. It made puddles on the floor and splashes on t lie wall. "Good gracious," cried the baron, as as lie could get away from the wa'.LT that was showering into his

mouth. "Water where gas ought to be, that means gas where water ought to be. Baroness gone to have a bath. Will turn gas 011 instead of water. May blow palace up. Terrible, awful, help." And he daalied out of the room, leaving the water still showering down just as the moving men came back from tea. "Quick, help," he shouted, "Baroness, batli, gas, watei', bang, ooer," and he tore up the stairs followed by the moving men, who didn't know anything about anything, but thought it must be something. Up the stairs they ran, but the top part of the carpet wasn't fixed, so down they all rolled again with the carpet round them like a goodness knows what. "Lemme go," shouted the baron, forgetting to speak nicely, he was so excited. He wriggled out of the carpet and rushed up the stairs again, smack into the new moving man who was bringing down a clock he'd taken upstairs'by mistake. "Bang, bang, bang, bang," he went on the bathroom door, but nobody answered, "Heavens," he cried, still talking like a telegram because he was short of breath, "Baroness got gas on, suflocating." "Down the stairs he rushed again and the moving men who had got out of the wriggly stair carpet and were coming up ran into him so that there was nearly another muddle. "Quick, bathroom door, 110 answer, smash in," panted the baron. Again he hammered on the door and again there was silence. The moving men hammered on the door and there was more silecce. "Get things to smash door in,"' cried the baron, and the moving men all rushed off to get it, except the new moving man who didn't understand smashing in doors. He turned the handle and tlie door opened. In dashed the baron, tripped over a mat and sat down. "Thundering sponge bags," he cried, "Oh, my goodness and all." Out of the bath taps were coming two long bright jets of flame, lighting up the bathroom much better than the propel gas was meant to do. And out of the gas burned 011 the wall was coming a shower of water like a lovely fountain. Right up to ceiling it was going and falling like glittering silver'into the bath which was half full. And the baroness? She was sitting on the bath stool still reading her book. She'd forgotten to undress, which was just as well, as she'd forgotten to fasten the door. And she had been so absolutely interested in her' book, if you could see what I mean, that she'd done another backwards sort of thing and lit the water taps and turned 011 the gas to nil the bath. It was lucky she had for, 01 course, you have guessed the baron had joined up the little pipes the wrong way round. , , . "There now," said the baroness, closing the book with such a bang that the moving men who had just arrived with a »ate post to smash in the door dropped ft on each other's toes. "What a lovely book. She does marry the prince after all just as I thought she would. Bv that time the proper gas and water men had come and they soon put everything right, so that as soon as the servants could get the butter scraped off the kettle they all had tea.