JUST BEFORE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 14, 30 September 1908, Page 50

JUST BEFORE.

Scene: At Home. Discovered: A husband- and wife. •She: Dear! Do you mind helping me? He (all ready fifteen minutes before. He has just finished- brushing his evening clothes and is note looking over the stockreport in the evening paper and smoking a cigarette} : What do you want ? (Her mouth full of hair-pins.} “Button up this waist, will you?” (Throwing down paper i) "Where is that maid?” “Now. dear, you know this is her afternoon off. Hurry!” ((letting up and walking over back of her. He takes hold of waist at top and starts on top button.} “What’s the matter with these buttons, anyway?” (Sweetly.) “Now, don’t lose patience. They slip right in if- ” “How do you suppose I can get the thing together when you’re squirming like an eel ?” (Screwing her head from one side to the other, absorbed in getting her hair right.) "You can do it.” (Savagely.) "Look here! You keep still! Now, I’ve got to begin all over. (He starts in. his face knotted up in agony and working frantically gets three buttons in.) Now! Now! Don’t move, 1 say! There! That’s better. Hold on! I've got ’em goingt Keep still!. Don’t you dare move! There!”' “Finished ?” “Yes.” (Standing up.) “Oh, you wretch. Don’t you see?” — “What the dickens is the matter now?” “Why. don’t you see. can’t you see, that you've started, wrong. It’s all got to be done over.”. “Dash it! What’s the -use? We’ll stay at- home.” ♦ ♦, ♦ THEIR ONLY QUARREL. “Did you ever quarrel with your wife, Biliks’" - “Only once." “Only once? Gee! , You are a lucky man." "Oh, it wasn’t luck. I merely found out then lhat it vCasn’t worth while." - "Aha! Had to let her have her way, eh?" 1 “No; it wasn’t that. She didn’t have her way.” “Oh, I see! You won out, and felt like a brute afterwards.” “Nope. I didn’t win out.” “Well, how the dickens” "Wliy, it was, this way. You see.’she wanted to mime the baby Thomas/ after me, and I wanted to name it William, after her father, who was a dead game old sport if there ever was one. We had an argument lasting two whole months, and while she wept I was firm; she was adamant even iu her tears, and I wasn’t to be’moved by heaven or earth. And then—well, then, you see, the baby was born." “And then, of course, you each.wanted •to give in to the other, and found yourselves still on opposing sides." “No. The baby was a girl.” NO PROSPECTS. Sympathetic Tattle Boy: You're awfully tired of keeping house, aren’t you, mother? Mother.:. Yes, dear. Blit, there isn’t even mueh use in dying and going te heaven, is there? ’Cause you’d have a mansion on your hands then. > ♦ ♦ A DREADFUL WOMAN, “That woman next door is really dreadful, John," said a young married woman io her husband. ‘’She does nothing but talk the whole day long. She cannot got any work done, I'm sure.” • “CHi,” remarked the - husband, “I thought she was a chatterbox. And to whom does she talk?’’ “Why, my dear, of course," was the reply. “She talks to me : over the fence;" —’‘Fhiladeiphfa Ledger?’ “' ‘ •