A HINT TO HUSBANDS.

Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

A HINT TO HUSBANDS.

Little Mrs. Evelyn stood before her husband ready to attend church. "How do I look?" she asked pleasantly, slowly pivoting for his inspection. "Hum!" said Mr. Evelyn, laying down his paper and taking up his hat, "you would look better. if you left off that disfiugring stuff on youi face." "The powder! Oh, Albert, my nose shone so it really looked perfectly horrid." " Let it shine," said Mr. Evelyn sternly; "If my nose shone like a gold dollar in. a mud gutter I wouldn't dab powder on it." "No-o, I suppose not. But wil] I do." "Do! Of course you'll do! Wh.a< queer questions you ask." , The tears welled up in the young wife's eyes, and a lump grew in hei throat. Where were the expressions of admiration that Albert Evelyn had used so lavishly in the days ol their courtship? "Beautiful," "lovely," "look like an angel!" "charming." She had not changed, She still thought her husband the most attractive of men. At dinner next day she prepared a surprise for him. " You used to be so fond of bird'snest pudding, Albert, that I have made one on purpose for you," she said, as she helped him to the delicacy. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating," he answered, in a grandiloquent manner. He ate one plateful, and asked foi a second supply. "Is it good?" inquired the little wife, whose foolish heart was hungering for some tribute of her service. "It doesn't need any praising," said my lord coolly. A more critical and less sensitive woman than Mrs. Evelyn would perhaps have been satisfied with this ambigous praise. She went to her room and had what women call " a good cry." A few evenings later she had forgotten all about it, and radiant in party finery sought her husband, who was waiting for her in the parlour. "Will I do?" she asked, as she burst upon him in all her girlish bloom. This time the disfiguring powder was so skilfully concealed that no man living could have told where nature ended and art begun. He looked her critically. " What's that thing dangling on your shoulders ?" "That? Oh, it's my white jet fichu. Isn't it lovely?" " Oh, yes, very. It makes you look like a Feejee. Is this string intended to drag." " That's my fan ribbon. How do you like the way my hair is dressed ?" " Why I suppose it's all right. I can't see that it. looks any worse than usual." Choking back a dry little sob, Mrs. Evelyn ran back upstairs to put on her wraps. A defiant, halfwicked thought flashed through her innocent heart like the trail of the serpent over Eden. "Somebody will admire me," it said. Mrs. Evelyn, senior, was in her dressing-room. She saw the look in the young wife's eyes, and felt sorry i^for her. ■ " Albert always was conceited," she said in the decided tones of mature age, " and you have thoroughly spoilt him. Now, take my advice, and give him a dose of his own medicine." Mr. Evelyn would have scorned the suggestion that he was vain of his personal appearance. But before tho evening was half over he found himself asking his wife how he looked. She did not answer, but glanced him over coolly. "Is my tie all right," he whispered ;• " don't you think Smithers cut this vest too low? How do I look, Ella?" "Just like the" 1 other waiters," eaid Mrs. Evelyn in a carelessly indifferent tone. " Did you intend to

have one end of your tie longer than the other ? Can't Bay that I admire it," and she walked off to dance with a gentleman who was waiting for her, leaving Albert blue with rage. But they had no quarrel. The good sense of the young wife prevented that. Only she did not hover about her husband in- her gay plumage any more, and he missed his bright bird. He never alluded to the dishes she prepared, and no surprises were set before him. Being in the main a sensible man, he saw where he had made a mistake. "How pretty you look!" he blurted out one night almost by accident. Ella, little traitor, had studied this effect for the past hour before her glass. Her eyes fairly danced with delight. " It is my new dress — the one you gave rue on my birthday. Is it becoming ?" "I should say it was. You look like a girl again, and it fits you to a r£ » If there was any insincerity in this, Ella did not observe it. No rouge could have brought such a colour to her cheeks as this praiae from her husband. " It pays," though Mrs. Evelyn, senior, as she overheard them; "a man is safe in making love to his own wife." She was right. And the average man is wrong when in becoming a husband he ceases to be a lover.