HOMELY, BUT AWKWARD

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2896, 7 October 1916, Page 10

HOMELY, BUT AWKWARD

♦ 'AN INFANTILE AFFAIR Let this little story, which happens to bo true, be a warning to indiscreet papas ivlio mimic other people in 'the hearing of their offspring. . Far away in the Roadless North there adventured one day a surveyor on professional business bent. As evening drew near, ho considered the question whether he would camp, or seek bed and board dn some human habitation. A blue-black mustering in the heavens, and an oppressive stillness in the air decided him, and he niado for a twinkling light in the dim distance. He yearned for society—and got it.

It was a queer household that received him, and agreed, for a consideration, to feed him and bed him. The man was bearded like the pard, tall, skinny, and depressed by the vast solitude which encompassed' his abode in the wilderness. The woman was the mother of many., and the patriarchal gloom of the sire sat heavily upon them all. They were all curiously of a shade—a pale, lifeless, sandy-grey tint, that enhanced the gloom. AVhen they spoke, their voices came in slow drawling syllables, subdued and hopeless, like the murmur of a coterie of lost souls

The surveyor, a happy-go-lucky young man with a wife and two small children in his little suburban honjo in Auckland, battled cheerfully in this blanket of gloom to create a social glow. They were glad to see him—their eyes told' him that—and more than glad to eit still and listen to him. It was as if the curtain of a veiled world had been drawn aside for a fugitive peep. Then they all sat down to that curious event in the daily routine of the Back-of-Beyond. tvhich is neither dinner nor [ tea, but that full and generous compromise which is best described ill colonial parlance as a good feed —stuffed mutton,, vegetables. Spotted Dick, tea, bread and butter, cheese, and jam. Dad sat at the head, with his youngest hopeful at his elbow; Mum at the foot, while the rest of- the ■ housohold distributed itself on benches along-each side. The surveyor sat at the end of the benches, near his solemn, host. The meal progressed. Conversation rose and languished in fitful puffs. During the first of one of these periodic lulls the youngest hopeful lifted up hie voice. "Da—ad!" ho said, in liis queer drawling monotone. "Yes, lovey?" answered his joyless parent. "Wo—ipe me nose." This parental office having been duly and tenderly administered, the meal

proceeded. Conversation again rose and fell in. fitful puffs as 'before,, and then, into the next lull, trailed the monotone of the infant: "Da—ad!" "Yes, lovey?" "Wo —ipo mo nose.'] There ■ was no variation—the same

summons for attention, the same response, tho samo request, and tho samo ritual. And so it continued,

punctuating the lulls till the last morsel of bread hatTwsappeared into the last satiated interior.

Three weeks later the surveyor returned to tho bosom of his family, and as was his wont related for entertainment his experiences in the lonely wildernesses in the Back-of-Beyond. I His most successful effort was the recitation, faithfully mimicked, of 'the plaintive entr'acte: "Da—ad?" "Yes, lovey?'" "Wo —ipe-me nose." / It bccamo a daily joke in his household, and .his-young-., son;, parrot-like,, ably seconded.him. Some time after, he-sent Ins family ; don'n to Rotorua -to amuse themselves while he returned to the trackless-soli-tudes to map out blocks in tho interests of. civilisation. On their first evening at the hotel, in tho midst of a small and select circle, tho surveyor's young son chummed up with an Indian-' colonel, who was spending his furlough with the trout on the Lake, and grinned cheerfully up at him. His mother was playing a Chopin nocturne at tho time. '' , "Well, old chap," said tho Colonel, "cnially, to the infant, "how goes it?" ° "Da —ad?" • 1 "Eh—what's that?" said the Colonel, in a startled voice. And as tho young ratal's mother rose from the piano, her offspring's next remark froze the smile on her lips. "Wo—ipe me nose,-' said the conscienceless infant, reproducing, as;faitlifully as a,, gramophone record, tho plaintive wail from tho far Back-of-Beyond. His mother, lier face scarlet, hastened to explain to tho petrified Colonel that her offspring was merely joking. 'But, as she told her grinning husband afterwards, "I nearly died of shame.' — "Wi."