"DEAD MAN" SITS UP.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19762, 8 October 1927, Page 2 (Supplement)

"DEAD MAN" SITS UP.

x REQUEST FOR THREE KISSES. HAPPY "FUNERAL DAY." DECEITFUL GIRL'S DODGE. The impudent deceit of the Ilampstead domestic servant who duped her mistress into giving her continued leave so that sho could nurse her " boy," whom she alleged was seriously ill, has a parallel in a case that occurred some time ago in Manchester. Here the servant first " killed" her sweetheart in order to enjoy a holiday with him, and then brought him back to life. The mistrsss was aware that the girl had a sweetheart, but knew little else about him. The young man arrived one day in Manchester from the country, and on that evening the servant returned home very late. She was white, terribly distressed, and sobbing. in hysterical manner she said her sweetheart had been killed on the railway at Longsight and his dead body was then lying at his

sister's house. The tragic story was related with such wealth of detail that mistress and maid miDgled their tears together. After breakfast the next morning the girl left the house ostensibly to attend to the sorrowful details of the funeral and the dead man's affairs. As a matter of fact, she spent the day happily with her sweetheart and returned about eleven with an amazing story. On leaving the house in the morning, she said, she purchased a wreath of flowers and placed it on the breast of the corpse with a sad kiss. Suddenly, she declared, while seeking for receipted bills for furniture which she had helped to purchase for their future home, the " corpse" sat up in bed and said, " Mary, thou owes me three kisses." Mary went on to embellish her story with a description of fetching »Aie doctor, of the latter's surprise on f.Ading the man whom he had declared to be dead alive again, how the " corpse's" sister and she had nursed )»im through the day, and then had decided that the sister should take on the night nursing, leaving the day nursing to Mary —if her dear mistress would let her go. Not only did Mary go, but she went nfT with her arms full of delicacies for the sick man. She and her sweetheart, who was without knowledge that he had been "a corpse" and was now " very sick," spent another jolly day in the city. The "corpse" gradually pulled

through, and at the end of about ten days Mary was not needed longer as a day nurse. And if Mary's mistress had not chatted to her neighbours about the carelessness of doctors, the bottom would never have dropped out of ftjary's story,.