How She Made Her Husband kidy.

Otago Witness, Issue 2630, 10 August 1904, Page 76

How She Made Her Husband k idy.

Mrs Niblick was skilled in a kind of marital alchemy, an art possessed by a few of her sex, by which Niblick defects were converted into something like Mitues. The transformation was so easy that Niblick's family thought that it was spontaneous. As soon as the Niblicks returned from their honeymoon trip Niblick's mother took the bride aside and spoke to her confidentially. "Perhaps I should say nothing at all, my dear," she said, "but my motherly affection for Thomas doesn't blind me to his faults, and there's no doubt about it, he's the most disorderly of men. I don't want to assume the attitude of an adviser, but if I were you I'd acoept the fact philoeophically, £>nd not- try to reform him. I've been trying to do that ever since he was old enough to run alono. : '

The bride looked thoughtful. "I'm glad you told me," she said. "I hadn't noticed that he was careless." "He'll scon show it," paid the mother.

Shortly after Niblick's carelessness began to mpnitcst itself. Ho came in one evening and left his hat on the dining-room table. When ho sat down to dinner the hat was still there', between the soup tureen and the fern d'"sh. Mrs Nibhek, at the end of the table, looked sweetly unconscious of the odd decoration. "Hullo! What's my hat doing there?" '"I was wondering." "I should think that girl would know enough to hang a man's hat up where it belongs." "I told her never to disturb any of your personal belongings, dear. Didn't you want it there?" "I meant to hang it up in the hall rack as I came in."

"That does seem rather more suitable for it, doesn't it?"

Niblick laughed and bung tip his hat. But when he changed his linen that evening to go out, he tossed what he ha^i discarded on the floor of his dressing room. When on the evening following lie found it in the same place, he told his wife that tho -floor had not been swept.

"Certainly it has," said Mrs Niblick. "Oh, is that why you thought so? How absurd ! Have you never seen that basket id the closet? That's for soiled clothes, dear."

Niblick picked up his things and threw them into the basket.

After thai a cigar stub remained a fixture on the library clock for two weeks before Niblick removed it. Meantime articles were . accumulating on all sides — newspaper clippings, burned raatch-euids, torn -env&lopes, golf sticks, and so on. Finally, when his smoking jacket was found, only after a long search, Niblick declared that the. domestic's ideas of tidying up were those of an idiot. "The rooms look like a dust-heap." said he.

"There's a peg in your wav.lrobe for your smoking- jacket," said Sirs Niblick, "but if yon prefer to hang it on a door-knob I've nothing to say."

Niblick immediately owned that he. was an untidy brute. "But why haven't you spoken to me about these things. I just forget, you know."

"You'll learn to remember, pprhaps. You are systematic enough at your office." "I have to be," said' Niblick ingenuously.

"As for speaking to you," said Mrs Niblick, "your mother tried that for a number of years, I understand. But don't let that worry you, dear. You shall put your things exactly where yoti please. Only no one will pick them tip after you." Niblick is now learning fast. —