WIFE’S HOLIDAY

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 10459, 14 December 1927, Page 2

WIFE’S HOLIDAY

WELCOMING HER BACK

RIGHT AND WRONG WAYS

You can believe me ox* not, but most of the time- my wile was away I was. thinking how happy I should be when sho came back (writes Robert Magill). It seemed a pity for me to be. having such an awl till/ good time and nobody to sliai’e it, so to speak;. and as a matter of fact, it was through this I lost the best pal 1 ever had. I talked toi him so much one night about how happy a man can be when lie is married, that the chump went straight* off and proposed to a gii-L Mind you, he hasn’t married her yet, so lie s still friendly with me, but in years to come I know he’ll blame me for it. However, it’s all very well to hop about' and chirp in the sunshine while your wife is away, but what of welcoming the little wanderer homo again?

TACT NEEDED. Speaking from experience, 1 should say tills is a time when the average married man has to be most tactful. He must make it evident that he is pleased to see her again, of course, but if he overdoes it, she’ll see through him. On the other hand, it he pretends he doesn’t care, she’ll believe he means it. Wives know so much about husbands that they always believe the worst of them, The thing its to get the first word in, before she starts to say things about what you have been doing in her absence. Ohe way is to complain to her about the way you found things in the home while she was away, and thus put her on her defence. Of course, you must tell her, too, of how you rn.ssed her every minute of the day, out however .long you put it off, there comes the time when she wants to know what you’ve been doing with yourself. Now it doesn’t do~to blush ancl hesttato and say “er well ” and then commence to make it up as you go along. Have it all written down on a bit of paper and learnt off by heart

AT THE. STATION As I say, that is the way to do it, although I must admit that somehow in inv ease it didn’t work. On the day she came back I. bought a new tie, and I was waiting on the platform for her as good as gold with my hat in my hand. It wasn’t myi fault that I waited at the wrong end of the train and that by the feme I found her she was outside the station walking round and round her luggage like a shingled tiger, defending it from the taxi drivers who wanted to pul. P ou their cabs. The first thing she said was, “Where did vou get that awful tie?’' I felt hurt at that. The man who sold it to me. told me it was a very nice Lie. I told her so, _ She said she might .have guessed it. Them was no need to say any more. I felfc aa though somebody had let go my hand in the middle of tho road, and I’d lost my bun. She talked about ties all tho way home. What sho didn’t understand was where I’d got money to waste on new ties when I wrote and told her I couldn’t afford to send her any r.iiLn<’* towards a new hat she’d seen. By the time we got home it didn’t seen) quite the right time for telling her about, the, dust 1 found under the ~iano, because she would have wanted to know why i moved the piano, and the fact was that wo shifted it tho night a few people, dropped in to see me. and we had a little dance. And that would have brought up the matter of that vase which got broken because somebody carelessly left it too near the edge of the mantelpiece.

' THAT LITTLE BET. / It appears I only _wrote, to her once, and she wanted to kffiow what the pencil figures on the back of the envelope meant. Sho showed them to me. They were: “2s Gd at sto 1 Humming Bird.” Now I know I ought not to tell her libs, but sho thinks betting is wicked, so I said it was hall-a-crown I gave to a girl who was calling at h*-*e to one to collect for a charity. I see now that this was a mistake, because my wife wanted to know why I. called’the girl “Humming Bird,” and did she hum, anyway? Which only show’s you that you ought never to tell your wife a tale, especially if it is going to cause more argument than telling tho truth. I got over the matter of the three empty bottles in the scullery. I said I borrowed them * one night from tho man next door to put candles in because the electric light failed. They were labelled “Beer,” and the mail next door is a teetotaller, or he says he is anyway. But that’s his look Ollt-._ POSERS. Now supposing you had been down several times to a place where they ran dances, and you’d had a thundering good—well, anyway, supposing you’d been down there, as 1 say, and the man who plays the saxophone had got into the habit of calling you “Bob,” and that the manager of the place knew you well enough ,to ask you to come out in the middle of the floor and give an exhibition of tho Charleston just to liven things up. And supposing your wife, who had been away, and had never been down to ‘tliis place, ancl dicing know you had either, should suddenly suggest that you take her down to dance. And supposing the people you knew at this dance hall didn’t know you were married. And supposing it was too late ta go out and buy a single ticket to Australia. I ask you. What would you do? .