BREACH OF PROMISE CASE.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXIII, Issue 228, 28 October 1887, Page 3

BREACH OF PROMISE CASE.

Everybody is laughing over the widow Child broach-of-promise case (writes the London correspondent of a southern codtemporary) yet what is there to laugh at ? Strange that a story of feminise courage and 88gaoity rewarded should excite our levity ! Mrs Child, lately a resident at Roslyn, is a widow "fat, fair, and forty " —and something beside. Her proportions avoirdupois as described by the English papers are "voluminous"; her years, even ac computed and confessed to by herself, are 40 ; her children are nine. Burdened with the conclonsness of those statistics, any other widow m her place, might have weakly concluded that life la all a fleeting show and resigned herself to regrets for the dear departed and the care of his numerous progeny. Mrs Child did nothing of the kind. Hardly had her widow's weeds grown familiar to her when she seems to have prepared herself fora new matrimonial campaign. She left Dunedin for England as a saloon passenger m one of the direct steamers. She left, m addition, eight out of the nine little ' ' pledges," entrusting then with just confidence to the care of a community which had already proved its exuberan; charity by founding 8 creche for the nursing of charwomen's babies, and a Servant's Home, that servants unanimously declared they didn't want and wouldn't use, and of wbioh the Committee are said to have m hand £400 that they don't know what to dowith. Fortune favours the brave ; Providence helps those who help themselves. The adventurous widow's sagacity m beginning her campaign by a long sea voyage was proved by the result. AH marriageable women are dangerous duriDg a long sea voyage — widows are doubly and trebly dangerous. With a middle-aged baohelor of means and expectations BifctiDg next to her every day at table, Mrs Child's market wes made. The Fates- had simply delivered him into her hands. What was merely a sympathetic interest m each other off the Horn became " spooning " at Rio, a raging passion on the equator, and an engagement at Madeira— an engagement which the experienced wido^Y duly entered m her pocket-book and got initialled and dated by the doting swain. That businesslike entry meant , as it turned out, £200 into Mrs Child's pocket. The voyage over, her middle-aged bachelor woke np to his ninefold bliss m tbe poaseesion of a widow and family ready-made, and it was too much for him. Mrs Child at once did her duty to herself and her nine orphans. She took him to court, got damages £200 for "breach," and was comforted. What is there to laugh at m Mrs Child ? Let them laugh that win ! A widow who a few months after committing to the silent tomb m Dunedin the father of her nine children wins a breach of promise action m a London Court; is a widow indeed— a widow to be named with awe and wonder, but assuredly not a widow to be laughed at.