MR AND MRS BOWSER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 7499, 19 October 1895, Page 6 (Supplement)

MR AND MRS BOWSER.

It was poming rain when Mr Bowser came home the other evening, and Mrs Bowser, who was watching for him from a front window, saw that he was soaking wet and realised that a scene was at hand. She opened the front door for him with the remark :

' I'm so sorry ! Get into some dry clothes right away.' Mr Bowser made no reply. He hung up his hat, walked into the sit-ting-room with his feet all muddy and the wet dripping from his clothes, and then turned on her with :

1 Mrs Bowser, what did I say to you as I left the house this morning? Don't attempt any evasion, now, but tell me what I said!'

< Why, I remember you said it looked a bit like rain,' she answered.

' I said it would rain before night, and it has ! I'm wet to the hide!'

' That's too bad !'

' Too bad ! And whose % fault is it 7 My mind was occupied with business affairs, and you knew it was, and yet you saw me walk off without an umbrella ! Mrs Bowser, I— !'

' Why, you took your umbrella along,' she interrupted.

' Never !'

' Of course you did ! Don't you remember dropping it at the gate 7 You walked right out of the office and left it there.'

' I did, eh ! Why don't you call me a first-class idiot and be done with it!'

' You must have done so, for you surely carried it away with you.' That's exactly what he did do, and he knew it, but he squirmed out of it by offering to bet her a million dollars to a cent that the front door had been left wide open all the afternoon, and that ahall-thief had carried off half the things down stairs. One morning there was a smell of gas down cellar, and Mr Bowser went down to see if he could discover a leak. He put on an old hat kept for ' poking around,' and when he left the house he wore it away. It was rusty and spotted and broken, but it was only when the boys down town began to ' shoot that hat' that he tumbled to it. Then he flew back with his eyes hanging out and his face plum-colored, and he was no sooner inside the house than he shouted :

« Look at it, Mrs Bowser —look at that infernal old junk-shop which you deliberately saw me wear away on my head and never said a word about it!'

' Did you wear that hat down town ?'

' Did I ! Did I !' he shouted, as he banged it on the floor and jumped on it.

' But I didn't see you go. I was upstairs when you went. Mr Bowser, you are certainly very absent-minded.' ' I am, eh ! It's a wonder that I don't forget to come home, isn't it! Mrs Bowser, if there is another house in the United States as badly managed as this I'd like to see it!'

« But can you blame me because you wore your old hat away 7' she protested. ' That's it—that's it! Shoulder it off on me ! The papers talk about tho startling number of divorces. It's a wonder to me there are not five times as many !' One day Mr Bowser brought home a

patent cork-screw, which some fakir had sold him, and Mrs Bowser saw him drop it into a wall-pocket. A week later, after wandering around the house for half an hour one evening, he halted before her and said : ' I'll be hanged if I don't get some chains and padlocks and see if I can't have things left where I put them !' ' What is it now ?' ' I brought home a can-opener a few days ago and left it on a bracket in the dining-room. It's gone, of course— probably given away to some big, lazy tramp ! It's a wonder we have a thing left in this house !' • A can-opener 1' ' Yes, a can-opener. If you never heard oE a can-opener I'll hire some one to write you out a history of it. It was invented to open cans.' ' Why, we have two or three in the kitchen. Do you mean a can-opener ?'

' I don't mean wind-mills or thrash-ing-machines '

' You had it in a pink paper 7 ' Yes, ma'am. 1 'It was the day the man fixed the gate 7' ' It was.'

' Well, I saw you drop it in that wall-pocket, and it's a corkscrew and not a can-opener.'

' It is, eh 7 Perhaps I don't know a hitching-post from the city hall!' he growled as he reached for the parcel and unrolled it. It was a corkscrew It could only be used as a corkscrew. It was made and sold for a corkscrew.

' Didn't I tell you 7' queried Mrs Bowser.

' Tell me what! You told me it was a corkscrew, and it's a can-opener, just as I said it was !'

'It's a corkscrew, Mr Bowser, as everybody will tell you.' ' I say it's a can-opener, and if all the world was to say to the contrary it would still be a can-opener. Mrs Bowser, I don't like your demeanor. No wife should stand up and dispute with her husband. When I don't know how to run this house I'll step down and out. While we are on the subject let me ask where that screw-driver is I was using upstairs a week ago ? I hunted for it two whole hours last evening. Perhaps you'll call that a corkscrew, too 7'

' You were boring a hole to put up a hook ?'

Yes'm—boring a hole.' ' And you used a gimlet and left it lying on the window-sill!' ' Woman !' shouted Mr Bowser as he pranced around, ' don't I know a gimlet from a screw-driver ?' ' Does any one bore holes with a screw-driver ?' she queried in reply.

Then there was deep silence for a minute, during which Mr Bowser turned red and white and breathed like a foundered horse.

' Mrs Bowser 1' he said at length, and in a broken voice, ' this is the limit—the last straw ! Our lawyers will get together to-morrow, and fix things up, and you can return to your mother. I don't want any dinner, and 1 shall be very busy this evening. Good night!'