EDITOR'S WALLET.

Otago Witness, Issue 2428, 26 September 1900, Page 70

EDITOR'S WALLET.

His Consecutbe Letters*. , THET BECAIIE MIXED, AXD HIS WIFE AT THE SEASIDE HAD A HAKD TI2IE. "Now, Arthur," said Mrs Barrington, as her husband put three handbags in the seat beside her in the sleeper and handed over six baggage. checks, "I want you to be sure and write 19 me every day, and tell me everything you think, just how much you miss me, and all about the way the servants get along — don't omit any of the details, thinking that 1 shall not be interested, for every word that you write, dear, will be precious to me. Put plenty of local colour in your letters." ''Oh, I'll keep you posted," he replied. ''You go ahead and have a good time and don't worry aboxit me. I'll get along some way. Of course, it'll be lonely and all that, but I'll manage to pass the time. It'll be rather dismal for me to sit on the porch alone when it begins to get dark, thinking oi you in the gay crowd having a good time, and never giving- v thought to "' "Arthur Barrington," his pretty wife interrupted, "if you continue to talk that way I jtiot shan't go. You know I shall think of you every minute I'm away, and if the doctor hadn't said the &sa air would be good for me I wouldn't have thought of accepting Aunt Laura's invitation. __ Please don't fret me, love, will you? Remember that, wherever I may be, and no matter how gay my surroundings, I shall be thinking of you." They threw kisses at each other as the train moved away. Then Barrington went tp his onice and begun writing letters;. They were to his. wife. He wrote 14- of them I—enough1 — enough to last for two weeks. In general outline the letters were about the same. He started each by filling a sheet- with endearing words and declarations that he was very lonely without his darling. Then, followed the local colour she wanted in the form of comments on occurrences of the day in and around their home. The letters were not dated, but he sealed and addressed them, and arranged them in a bunch, so that his stenographer could take off the top one day after day and drop it into the mail box. He had been gone nearly a week when there came a telegram for him. Of cour»e telegrams had to be opened, and when Miss Wildreth, the stenographer, read the message she turned pale : — -"Why don't you answer my questions about the housemaid's ankle and your liver? Am awfully worried." That was what Elizabeth Barrington had telegraphed. After studying the matter for a while Miss Wildreth decided that it was necessary for her to act. She was clever enough to hold a position that not more than one man out of 50 4 could have filled, and she had' the habit of Seeping her eyes and ears open* Still, she said to herself: — '"The housemaid's ankle? I can see how he might know something about his own liver, but — and why should his wife, of^ all people, want him to see about it? Well, if I ever get married -" But instead of finishing what she had started to say ehe wrote the following : — "Leg and liver O.K. Don't worry." It was about 10 o'clock the next day when another telegram for Arthur Barring ton was received. It read : — "Yesterday's letter contradicts telegram. Why are you deceiving me? Arc you better to-day. Shall I come home?" The stenographer's reply was as follows: — "Am true as steel. Don't think of coming home." Miss Wildreth had just began to feel that &he had succeeded in settling the disagreeable business when a messenger boy arrived with another telegram, in which her employer's wife said : — "Don't understand. What do you mean by being tlrue as steel? Something tells me you are worse. Wire immediately." The stenographer replied : — "Never mind reference to steel. Am all right." Mrs Barrington watched eagerly for the postman on the following day, and when he handed Arthur's letter she opened it with trembling fingers. Eagerly she scanned the first page and was about half through the local colour when she jumped up and ran to her aunt, crying: — "% "What can this mean? Three days ago Arthur wrote that the housemaid was 'still laid up with her lame ankle,' which I have tried in vain to get him to tell me about, and that he was not feeling well, and the doctor had 'told him his liver was out of order. Yet here in to-day's letter he tells mo that the housemaid has just fallen out of a cherry , tree, spraining her ankle, and that he made Uys&jliLft Wj?l§h_ rarebit JJUe, night jjcforejiistj

and ate so muoh of it, that hies livev is all upset. Why on eartli did the housemaid, climb a cherry tree when bhe had a lams ankle? and whatever possessed Arthur to eat a Welsh, rarebit when the doctor had just warned him about his liver?" Her aunt was trying to figure il out, when Elizabeth Barrington happened to think of the telegram she had received the day before. "This letter must have been written about the time they were sent," she said. "I'm going home. Something's wrong. Arthur's liver trouble has gone to his head. My poor darling has lost his reason. He writes a thing and then denies it by telegraph. By starting-to-night I can be with him to-morrow forenoon. Oh, how shall I pass the weary hours J" Miss Wildreth broke down and made a full confession when Mr.- Barring t'g' rushed, wildeyed and pale, into her husband's office. Then the two young women sat together in the private room and wept. "If I hadn't accidentally knocked over tho pile of letters he left to me mailed," xhe stenographer sobbed, "they would not have been mixed up; there would have been no reference to the spraining of the housemaid's crnlcle before it happened, and hiss liver would not have troubled him until after, he ate the rarebit. How shall I eyer be alile to explain it to hini?" "you needn't try," .Mrs Barrington answered.' "I'll explain to hinrTwhen. lie:" comes out of the woods. Dear old fellow ! I'm =o glad he doesn't know anything, ahoiil this, fie mightn't be having a good time at all if he did." — Chicago Times-Herald. J