A REAL NOVEL.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVIII, Issue 10741, 12 November 1928, Page 3

A REAL NOVEL.

SHOP GIRL’S MARRIAGE

THE OLD STORY COMES 'TRUE,

Ma pretty a romance as every blosjwmed between the covers of a novelette was revealed a few weeks ago. The late diaries Garvice himself could not have written a more heart warming love story than this in real life at New Malden, Surrey, . The lovely heroine is—or was a shop-girl, Hilda Grace Plumridge, not yet 20; the hero is Cecil John Sainsbury, the 21-years-old grandson of the.-founder of the famous provision firm of that name, who lately died, leaving £1,158,615. He works at the headquarters of the firm near Blackfriara Bridge, For three years Miss Plumridge had been working as cashier in the firm’s branch at New Malden, sitting in a little glass compartment, whose windows, did she but know it, were magic casements opening on to Wonderland. One day not long ago she took part in an outing arranged by. her employers—and met the hero of the story.

They fell in love “at first sight,” as they say in the novelettes, and soon they met again. The other week a inotor car drew up outside the little cottage at New Malden—one of va terrace of such little cottages—where the lovely cashier lived >with her parents and their several other children, and out stepped the young Mr Sainsbury. He had come to ask for her hand in marriage! Her parents were amazed ; they had not dreamed that their daughter had been “walking out” with him even.

The bride’s mother, a little woman with work-worn hands, retold the story to a reporter. “Hilda had not said a word to me about Mr Sainsbury, before he came to me himself;” she said. “You can guess what I felt; hut I’m a Northcountry -woman, and I speak straight cut about a-thing, and I told him at once how w© are situated in life and that Hilda hadn’t money. But what could I say when he insisted that it was Hilda he wanted and nothing else in.'the’.world? “I did say that she was very young to marry, but he said to that: ‘Don’t worry about that—lll keep her young when we are married.’ That was very nice, I thought. “Anyone could see that lie idolised her, and she him. So my husband and I at last gave our consent. But rny husband would not go to the wedding, for, like most men, he hates weddings), and nothing would make him go. “One of my other girls, Aileen, , was ai bridesmaid, though, and the wedding at St. Andrew’s, Totteridge, in Hertfordshire, went off beautifullv.

“Mr. Sainsbury, my son-in-law’s father, was there, and at the reception I saw him take Hilda into his arms) and kiss her as though she had been his own daughter.”