WHY I MARRIED A FLIRT.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume II, Issue 288, 9 November 1912, Page 4 (Supplement)

WHY I MARRIED A FLIRT.

THE BETTER SIDE OF A FRIVOLOUS GIRL’S NATURE.

T DIDN'T marry a flirt. She really -1- married me. lint that is quite beside the point. The question is, why did I allow myself to succumb sufficiently a.s finally to be led to the altar?

Well, there were several reasons for my ‘’leading”; but the principal one, to bo perfectly candid, was my wife’s reputation for being that “ abandoned creature"—looked askance at by every match-making mother with plain daughters—r. flirt.

In tlio old days her reputation in this particular art was firmly established. Didn’t 1 suffer from it in those breathless moments of alternate hone and despair, when every single eligible man within a radius of twenty miles waa favoured v.-itli exactly the same kind of smile from her laughing eves as I was? Wasn’t her reputation perfectly apparent on tho’o never-to-be-forotten aitcriiw:w when I turned up to play “singles.” only to find half the fellows of the neighbourhood already there, at her invitation, presumably with no other object in view than to spoil sport? THE JOY OF IT ALL.

"Wasn’t. tho fact impressed upon mo — I could ro on for ever. She was r> flirt —there is no matter of doubt about, it; a perfectly unashamed little 1 HISS J’l

And tii.it early adroitness of my wife still fills mo with a joy that is keen, rendered doubly sweet by the thought that it was I —l who snatched h»r from the ■;tlaera after all. And that keen ioy isn't diminished by thn faintest tittle—indeed, rather increased —by tho fact that th© girl 1 married is still a. flirt. This very trait in her character drew mo towards her in tho days th.!.! are gone, and it draws mo towards her still. My wife must flirt with comeon?, so she flirts with ire. We have never yet reached that jog-trot stage of married bfo about which enthusiastic lovers are invariably warned by “ ontimistic’’ friends. And pray Heaven we may never roach it. if tho present fascinating stat-5 of affairs is to cease. For instance, in soma subtle way all her own, my lif-e--pnrtner even now—and wo’vo been married quite a ridiculous number of years, and have three kiddies shooting their ray up—still keeps mo eager t-o know I’.cr opinion on such and such a, subject. I don’t know how it’s done; I only know it’s vastly entertaining.

TfER HUSBAND CAREFULLY’ CHOSEX.

The- frwt of the whole matter is, I believe, that she never takes me “for granted.” Do you know what I mean? She never appears to think I owe her e, debt of affection because I’in married to her, which —such is the general cuscednes-: of my nature—makes me always want to give in to her more than ever.

There is another little thing, too. Her very flirting taught her the value of men,. just as continued shopping has since tnueht her the value of foodstuffs. She was therefore able, in those bygone day.’, to discriminate perfectly soundiy betv.een the good, bad, and indifferent, character!-. of the men who surrounded her. So that when she finally made her 'ihoice, it was done clear-sightedly and for ever.

I do not feel that cnrking fear which other men have confided to me—the men with wives who have never mixed with a crowd of male acquaintances, and who they are afraid to trust with another man, lest the girl may discover some unsuspected sympathy which does not exist between her and tiro man she married. I have to thank my wife’s flirtatious nature for an absence of this trouble. Sho weighed up the worst and best of mo in those lawn-tennis days, and chose mo “for better, for worse” —and I’m afraid it’s very often “for worse,” for wo men, even the best of us, are kittle cattle. But there isnt’ a shadow of doubt about our happiness