MEN’S POCKETS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 17, 23 April 1892, Page 427

MEN’S POCKETS.

HOW A HUSBAND ESCAPED FROM A GRAVE PREDICAMENT. Men’s pockets exert a strange fascination upon women. Many and many a quarrel has been precipitated upon a quiet and trustful household by the wife in an inquisitive mood thrusting her fingers into the pockets of the coats or waistcoats dangling from the nails of a wardrobe. She finds a card, a letter, a bit of golden hair, or some little gewgaw of feminine apparel, and green eyed jealousy immediately takes possession of her soul. Sometimes she rushes with demoniac fury upon her unsuspecting lord and master, waving aloft the tell-tale card or letter ; but more frequently she hies her to her mamma, and the twain betake them to a sharp detective, who is instructed to work up the case. Maude is engaged to Joe Burleigh, called • Burly Joe’ at the athletic clubs, where he is what is known as a good all round man—which is Greek to me. While Maude and Joe were pursuing the phantom of love’s young dream in the back parlour, Maude, woman like, began rummaging in Joe’s coat pockets. She criticised his handkerchief and the perfume he used ; she commented upon his cigarette case and match box, and asked the use to which each key in the bunch was put. At last it occurred to her that she hadn’t had her little fingers in Joe’s right hand vest pocket, and so down into its depths they were thrust incontinently. There was a sudden start, a deeper grab, a drawing forth and a holding aloft—what think you ’ Why, half a dozen as dainty little silver hair pins as were ever thrust into a Grecian coil. Now. as Maude’s hair was as black as night and she naturally affected gilt pins, it was impossible for Joe to claim that he had bought them for her, so turning all colours, he stammered out the real truth of the matter, that he didn’t know and couldn’t tell how the silver pins came in his vest pocket. Maude refused to believe him—they had been bought for some other girl, some horrid thing with taffy-coloured tresses. She appealed to him to make a clean breast of it, promising to forgive him if he told her the whole truth. Suddenly, Joe caught his weeping sweetheart up in his stout arms and tossed her up into the air as if she were a fifty-pound dumb-bell.

‘ Hurrah, Maude ! I have it,’ he cried. • You know that Archie Lewis is in love with that strawberry blonde, Kitty Williams. Well, Archie and I have adjoining lockers at the gymnasium. Our clothes often get mixed, as we use the same line of hooks. This afternoon I reached the club before Archie, and he no doubt bung his vest up alongside of mine. Then as he continued to undress he found these silver hairpins in his trousers’ pocket, and wishing to transfer them to this pocket he reached up and slipped them, not into his, but into my pocket. That’s the way the thing happened. I can see it all now as plain as a pikestaff.’

‘Yes,’said the delighted Maude, ‘ and they are just the shaped pins that Kitty wears. Oh, Joe, I didn't doubt you for a minute, but please don’t frighten me like that again.’