HE SOMETIMES HAS HIS DOUBTS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume V, Issue 52, 27 December 1890, Page 20

HE SOMETIMES HAS HIS DOUBTS.

‘All 1 ooizs Day,’ observed the lean, hungry-looking man near the biscuit-banel, * when it come> round always brings to mind a sell that was perpetrated■ on me when I was a young man. I received a tinted and perfumed note, asking me to join a little party at the home of a certain young lady, for the purpose of giving one of her friends a surprise. I was to call at 8 o’clock in the evening. The date was April Ist. but the idea of a sell didn't occur to me, and I went. There was nobody to receive me but the young lady herself, and she was almost a total stranger to me. She hadn't bean! of the proposer! surprise at all. I apologised, of course, for being taken in by such a stupid hoax and for the annoyance I had caused her by calling.’ The speaker paused and looker! contemplatively at the row of canned gooseberries on the upper shelf in the little store, and the man who wa~ absent-mindedly helping himself to dried prunes from the box on the counter, asked—- ■ Was that all there was of it ?’ ‘ No,’ was the reply. ‘ The young lady smiled pleasantly and said that inasmuch as I had taken the trouble to call I must stay awhile. So I did, and spent a very pleasant evening.’ ‘ Then it wasn’t much of a sell, after all I 7 suggested the man in brown overalls, who was teasing the store cat. ‘ Why, as to that,’ said the lean, hungry-looking man, in a hollow voice, as he passed his hand in a vague, uncertain way over his bald head and looked at the fire with a pensive, far away gaze, ‘I am not so sure of that. I—l married that young woman afterward !’ He took a chew of navy plug, heaved a large, dry. doleful sigh, and nobody spoke for the space of five minutes.