MR POTTIE’S DAY AT HOME.

Otago Witness, Issue 4066, 16 February 1932, Page 73

MR POTTIE’S DAY AT HOME.

“ But we can’t go, William. We couldn’t leave you for a whole day and night, Polly and me.” “ Look here, my dear woman,” said Mr ' Pottie on the other side of the hearth from Mrs Pottie, “ if you think that a journeyman draughtsman on one of the largest shipbuilding firms on the Clyde isn’t fit to run a three-room-and-kitchen house for a day and a night—why, I’d manage a house with one hand and read a book with the other—l mean ”

“ I know you’re terrible clever, William,” said Mrs Pottie, a small, pretty, faded woman, but ” “ Now, Mima, it’s me telling you, and you’ll write and tell Annie Watson with my love that you’ll see her at Peebles to-morrow and have a real heart-to-heart talk about old times.” “ Oh, Willie, it would be lovely.” “ And I was just wishing for a wee quiet time myself. The doctor told me the other day that what I needed was a quiet rest—so I’ll get it alone in the house. As for the housework ” —Mr Pottie laughed amusedly—“ it would simply be a rest cure to a man like me.” “ It’s your week off Babster and Bennie’s too,” said Mrs Pottie, reflectively. (Mr Pottie’s firm, owing to slack times, was working its men week off and on.) “ It’s settled, I tell you—go and tell Polly to pack your tooth-brushes,” said Mr Pottie with a commanding air. * * ❖ He sat back in his chair, smiling, as he heard the exclamations of pleasure proceeding from his daughter’s lips on receiving his fiat. How excitable women were! What a fuss they made about things! This housework now—that would mean absolutely nothing to him. Perhaps, of course, he was a bit more capable than other men.

He knew he was a strange man. At school none of the boys understood him. He had wanted to be a school teacher. Original—decidedly. Unfortunately Mr Pottie had failed twice in “ The Common Subjects ” examination, which in his day was the first easy hurdle on the way to an M.A. degree. When his father had gone to school to know the reason why the head teacher had urgently advised him to put William into some work where he could deal with hammers and nails and things like that, “ for,” said the teacher earnestly, holding Mr Pottie’s father’s hand, “we can only suppose that his talents must lie in such direction — simply must.”

So that is how Mr Pottie had been apprenticed to the shipbuilding trade, always being commanded, when he had wished to command.

This, with anyone else, might, according to Mr Freud, have resulted in an inferiority complex; but with Mr Pottie being so original, it had simply brought on a superiority complex. He always desired to command, and now the idea of being in complete command of a three-room-and-kitchen flat pleased him. “A joy-ride, and a rest cure at once; that’s what it’ll mean to me,” smiled Mr Pottie.

The house was rather messy after his wife and daughter left—one knows how

it is when people rush ‘off somewhere early in the morning. Mr Pottie in his shirt sleeves got to work, however, clearing the kitchen table, washing dishes, sweeping up the floor, and coaling the fire to keep the hot water going. The door bell rang considerably, but Mr Pottie showed his originality in treatment of that problem by simply not answering the “ rings.”

After the kitchen was “ done ” he felt strangely weary, and retired, with most of his clothes on, to his bed, which he had not yet had time to “ make.” _ Between resting, partly’ dosing, the time actually passed quickly. Then Mr Pottie, remembering suddenly about dinner, swung his legs out of bed and went to look through the presses for meat. There was none, and suddenly it flashed across his mind that probably one of the “ rings ” he had not answered had meant the butcher’s boy with meat ordered on the previous day. There was nothing for it but to go out and get some.

Mr Pottie went to get his boots, and then something about the time and the day occurred to him. The hour was 1 p.m., and the day—wasn’t there something about

Then Mr Pottie remembered that after 1 p.m. on Tuesday shops shut. He grew pale. Nothing in the house for a meal of nourishing kind, but bread and milk and potatoes! It was too big a job, Mr Pottie considered, seeing all the vitamins that were in them, to cook potatoes, so he set to work to prepare a meal of bread and milk.

After partaking of this he felt so much in want of sustenance that he went to bed again. No one could expect him to do any more work on the house with no food practically in him. Again he dozed for about an hour. Then the doorbell rang, and Mr Pottie sprang up. It might he the butcher’s boy come back. It wasn’t, but it was a man selling fish. Mr Pottie gratefully bought a “ haddie ” and returned whistling buoyantly’ to the kitchen to cook it.

It was quite nicely done, and Mr Pottie had placed it on a plate on the table, when again the doorbell rang. With clenched teeth Mr Pottie strode to the door and opened. “ Penny for the back,” said a woman with a shawl, a weather-worn hat low on her brow, and evidently suffering from a gumboil. “Penny? What? Whose back?” demanded Mr Pottie haughtily. “Yours: I mean it’s the day ye’s all pay the back close,” replied the woman huskily. “ Cleaning it.” “ And do you mean to tell me that not only do I pay cleaning of the front close but a back entry which I never use? Do I or my family promenade in the back close? This is absurd. It is the owner of the tenement who should pay this. Am I to give out unlimited pennies for his back when I do not use it myself ? ” “ Penny for the back,” repeated the lady with the gumboil. mechanically, wondering if Mrs Pottie, a decent, sensible woman, had married a “daftie.” “ Here, then; but for the last time, mind you.”

Mr Pottie slammed the door and stalked back to the kitchen; but, alas, he had argued too long about that penny, for the family cat, which had slipped in from the outer world past Mr Pottie’i

legs unnoticed by him as he stood at the door, had returned with an appetite, and if it had been asked what it would have liked best for its tea it would have mewed “ baddie.’’ So it was eating Mr Pottie s “ baddie ” on the floor.

With an inarticulate yell—it was an occasion which defied the finding of any “mot juste”—Mr Pottie sprang for the eat, but it, strong with meat, leapt agilely to the dresser, and from thence to a high shelf where, with the intelligence of a super-cat, it took shelter behind a mug inscribed with “ Present from Dunoon,” which had belonged to< a youthful dead Pottie. “ Oh, you—you! ” stuttered Mr Pottie, but, in face of the “ Present from Dunoon,” left it at that and sank with a glassy stare on to a hard kitchen chair.

Then his eye fell on the mess the cat had made on the floor with the “haddie,” and he rose heavily’ again to clean it up. Before kneeling down he looked round for something with which to protect his clothes. Ah! There on a chair was the very thing—an “ overall ’’ covered with a gay’ design of roses belonging to Mrs Pottie. Mr Pottie put it on, slipping with some difficulty under crossed bands which kept it in place behind. Then the door bell rang. Purple in the face, Mr Pottie tried to slough the flowery garment, but in vain. The bands at the back clung to him! Again the bell rang, and Mr Pottie fearing it might be a postman w’ith a registered letter meaning money from a son abroad, bravely’ dared to open the door.

“ Oh, if you please, Mrs Pottie,” said a sweet young voice belonging to the pretty’ daughter of the family who lived below the Potties, and somewhat higher in the social scale.

Then suddenly' Miss Walker’s blue eyes widened as they met Mr Pottie’s and took in a baldish head, a grey moustache, and stubbly chin {Mr Pottie seldom shaved on his time off work) that rose above the gay flowered pinafore—“ Oh, excuse me, I have forgotten something,” said Miss Walker as she fled downstairs. A minute later there was a sound as of some one in uncontrollable hysterics in the flat below the Potties, as Mr Pottie. weak with want and humiliation, sank into a chair, laid his baldish head on his rose-covered arms along the kitchen table. A sound like a. sob escaped him. He to be laughed at by beautiful young women! Him in a pinafore—going to bed in it!

In his feeble state Mr Pottie could see no way out of the overall, with nobody at his back to help him. He might be found dead in it maybe. Him! that might have been a school teacher or anything!

Mr Pottie felt his superiority complex slipping off him, leaving him bare of comfort, even decency. Then suddenly a noise at the front door startled him, and he lifted his head.

The kitchen door opened softly. “ Oh, William,” said Mrs Pottie tremulously, “ please don’t be angry, hut I left Polly w’ith Annie and came home with the afternoon boat. Somehow I had a foolish feeling that you wouldn’t be getting on ”

“ Why, Mima dear, dear old girl,” cried Mr Pottie. suddenly feeling his superiority complex closing round him again as cosily as new’ winter “ woollies ” as he stretched out his rose-garlanded arms to his wife—“ Wh-what nonsense!” •—Rita Richmond, in the Glasgow’ Weekly Herald.