A HONEYMOON SURPRISE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 12, 30 August 1911, Page 3

A HONEYMOON SURPRISE.

There was a sharp sound of flesh meeting flash, and in the dead silence that followed a cloud of puudre do ri/. floe.ted gently tram the young bride's check and settled on tho bacon and eggs in front of the newly-married husband at the other side oi the table. With half-open mouth and staring eyes, be ga/.od at her transfixed. Her face! 'they had been married a week, and lie lin'd smacked her face —the lace that he had worshipped for years, the face that lie had sworn to love and to cherish.

'j nere passed through his mind all his old visions of their married life—the indescribable bliss,of the union of two loving hearts after weary years of waiting, and the vista of a life-long happiness never to lie clouded by a cross word or even an ungracious ,thought. And it had come to tin’s! With breath drawn in, and rmid countenance, she sent him a stai tied look that went to Ins heart and seemed to stop its boating. Ho waited with a shudder for the reproach—the first reproach—that must surely lie coining. She withdrew her eyes—still expressionless—from his, and gently bowed her head. Was lie to see tears—the first tears? At the thought his heart, that hut a few seconds before was.almost still, scorned to swell until it thundered at his breast and sent the blood singing in his ears. Her eves bent lower still until they were directed at the plate in front of her. She brought a hand above the table, picked up with linger and thumb a small object that lay upon the buttered toast, and held up the mangled corpse of a black-ancl-yeliow-handed insect. ‘•Thanks, ’Erb,” she said. “Another moment and it would have stung me. 1 never could abide them wasps.”