Mean.

Otago Witness, Issue 2207, 18 June 1896, Page 47

Mean.

"Papa is positively jq'st too mean for anything," said the girl in blue bitterly. "What is the matter?" asked the girl in grey sympathetically. " Well, of coarse you heard of my marriage; dear ? " : " Oh, yes, of course I did. Wasn't that just lovely ? " • "No, it wasn't." "No?" "No," echoed the girl in blue sharply. "Why, I thought it was, 1 ' eaid the girl in grey in surprise. "I heard that you eloped." " We did." "And that your father followed you all over the country." " Well, he didn't. He aoted just as meanly as he could." "What did he do?" "Nothing." • " What did you want him to do,, then ?" <„ " Oh, I wanted him to make a fuse, and get the story in all 'the papers, and then people would have talked about ou? romance, and we'd have been somebody. But he didn't make any fuss about it at all." " That, to say the least, was strange," said the girl in grey. "It was more than strange— it was downright mean. It just spoiled all the effect of the elopement. And that wasn't the meanest part or it." , !

"What else did he do?" " When we came back and tried to get up a little something dramatic by walking into the room and announcing tbat we we're' man and wife, he spoiled it all by juet looking up from his papftr and saying : " ''Well, that lets me off the cost of a wedding, doesa't it ? ' " "It was horrid of him ! " said the girl in grey, trying not to smile. " Why, I was co disappointed I could have cried."'