A Loving Couple.

Otago Witness, Issue 1934, 19 March 1891, Page 28

A Loving Couple.

I was sitting in the parlour of a small country hotel in Otago. After a long walk in search of ferns, I was enjoying the physical comforts of a lazy position in front of a roaring fire, and the mental comforts of reading a little book with selections from Propertiua. A torrent of angry words, interspersed with a good number of oaths, drew my attention from the book. The voice was a woman's. A little while after the owner of the voice made her appearance. She was the mistress of the house — a huge-framed, muscular woman with neck and shoulders like a Milo, a square, angular face, the cheek-bones of which were so protruding that one could almost hang one's hat on them. "Do you know," she said to me, " I have just been jawing my old man. He is a d nuisance. I can tell you I have often when I have gone to bed at night wished that I would find him dead by my side in the morning." She told me that the house belonged to her when she married him a year after her; first husband's death. When I asked her what persuaded her to get married again when she was left in such good circumstances, she answered, " Oh, I thought it would be handy to have a man about the place to look after the stable and dig the garden." '