WIFE’S HOLIDAY OVER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19993, 9 November 1927, Page 7

WIFE’S HOLIDAY OVER

WELCOMING HER BACK RIGHT AND WRONG WAYS. (By Robert Magill). You can believe me or not, but most of the time my wife was away I was thinking how happy I should be when she came back. It seemed a pity for me to be having such an awfully good time and nobody to share it, so to speak; and as a matter of fact, it was through this I lost the best pal I ever had. I talked to him so much one night about how happy a man can be when he is married, that the chump when straight off and proposed to a girl. Mind you, he hasn’t married her yet, so he’s still friendly with me, but in years to come I know he’ll blame me for it.

it’> all very well to hop about and chirp in the sunshine while your wife is away, but what of welcoming the little wanderer home again? Tact Needed. Speaking from experience, I should say this is a time when the average married man has to be most tactful. He must make it evident that he is pleased to see her again, of course, but if he overdoes it she’ll see through him. On the other hand, if he pretendens he doesn’t care, she’ll believe he means it. Wives know so much about husbands that they always believe the worst of them. The thing is to get the first word in, before she starts to say things about what you have been doing in her absence. One way is to complain to her about the way you found things in the home while she was away, and thus put her on her defenceOf course, you must tell her, too, of how you have missed her every minute of the day, but however long you put it off, there comes the time when she wants to know what you’ve been doing with yourself. Now it doesn’t do to blush and hesitate and say (< er— well ” and then commence to make it up as you go along. Have it all written down on a bit of paper and learnt off by heart. At the Station. As I say, that is the way to do it, although I must admit that somehow in my case it didn’t work. On the day she came back I bought a new tie, and I was waiting on the platform for her as good as gold with my hat in my hand. It wasn’t my fault that I waited at the wrong end of the train and that by the time I found her she was outside the station walking round and round her luggage like a shingled tiger, defending it from the taxi drivers who wanted to put it on their cabs. The first thing she said was, ‘ 1 Where did you get that awful tie?” I felt hurt at that. The man who sold it to me told me it was a very nice tie. I told her so. She said she might have guessed it. There was no need to say any more. I felt as though somebody had let go my hand in the middle of the road, and I’d lost my bun. She talked about tics all the wayhome. "What she didn’t understand was where I got the money to waste on new ties when I wrote and told her 1 couldn’t afford to send her anything towards a new hat she’d seen. By the time we got home it didn’t seem quite the right time for telling her about the dust I found under the piano, because she would have wanted to know why, I moved the piano, and the fact was that we shifted it the night a few people dropped in to see me, and we had a little dance. And that would have brought up the matter of that vase which got broken because somebody carelessly left it too near the edge of the mantelpiece. That Little Bet. It appears I only wrote to her once, and she wanted to know what the pencil figures on the back of the envelope meant. She showed them to me. They were: “2s 6d at 5 to 1 Humming Bird.” Now I know I ought not to tell her fibs, but she thinks betting is wicked, so I said it was half-a-crown I gave to a girl who was calling at five to one to collect for a charity. I see now that this was a mistake, because my wife wanted to know why I called the girl “Humming Bird,” and what did she hum, anyway? Which only shows you that you ought never to tell your wife a tale, especially if it is going to cause more argument than telling the truth. I got over the matter of the three empty bottles in the scullery. I said I borrowed them one night from the man next door to put candles in because the electric light failed. They were labelled “Beer,” and the man next door is a teetotaller, or he says he is, anyway. But that’s his look out. Posers. Now supposing you had been down several times to a place where tney ran dances, and you’d had a thundergood—well, anyway, supposing you’d been down there, as I say, and the man who plays the saxophone had got into the habit of calling you “Bob,” and that th§, manager of the place knew you well enough to ask you to come out in the middle of the floor anri gave an exhibition of the Charleston just to liven things up. And supposing your wife, who had' been away, and had never been dow«* to this place, and didn’t know you had either, should suddenly suggest that you take her down there to dance. And supposing the people you knew down at this dance hall didn’t know you were married. And supposing it was too late to go out and buy a single ticket to Australia. I ask you. What would you do?