THE Wrong Foot

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 71, 17 December 1917, Page 11

THE Wrong Foot

(By «m.")

A CHRISTMAS EVE IDYLL

ST? 'J' is a bad beginning for Christinas Evo for a man to put his J[, wrong foot out of bed on tlio morning of this auspicious day, but accidents will happen in tlio host regulated families. From the moment that Georgo Tompkins touched the cold linoleum with his reluctant feet and began to preparo himself for duo presentation at tlio office of tho Tuatiira Household Supplies Company, Limited (branches everywhere), as the perfect model of what a ledger clerk at four pounds a week should bo, things went wrong. Tho baby had woke him up out of -his pleasant dreams at two in tlio morning, and as the result of this interruption he bad slept in, and had to face tho battle of lil'o on that particular day twenty minutes behind scratch. His wife was still asleep, and so was tho small vandal whoso fractious conduct had caused the domestic machinery to slip ft cog. Ho went to tho window and looked out at tlio weather. A howling southerly in mid-summer. Ugh! Then he made a bolt for tho bathroom, but as bo reached the bedroom door tho mat slipped on tho polished ball floor, his feet went, up m tho nir, and he slid in his pyjamas as far as the hall table.

"Good gracious alive!" came tho voice of his wife. "Whatever ARE you doing, George? You'll wako tho baby!" "Let him wake I" ho yelled. "And perish tho silly imbecile who over invented polished floors I Do you want mo to break my neck?" There was no reply. The bed creaked, two small feet scuffled across tho floor, and an unseen hand gently, firmly, with a click that signified that all men in general, and George Tompkins in particular, were brutes, closed the door. Which, you must admit, was rough on Georgo. Tho victim of cruel and unexpected circumstances, he had been kicked when ho ought to have been kissed. The door had been shut in his face, as it were, and he stood, a social outcast, a pariah, rubbing his bruises in the grey early morning cheerlossuess of the hall. A sense of injured innocence, of deep and ineradicable personal injustice, settled upon'his spirit.

"Lovely!" he said, and sulked off to tho bathroom. Ho felt better after his tub, and as the rough towel pinked up his skin ho actually whistled a few bars of "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kitbag" beforo he suddenly remembered his wrongs. Ho rehearsed his grievances. "If sho hadn't hutted in like that I'd have got over it," ho said to himself. * "But, no, sho had to rub it in. That's women. If I've slipped on that.confounded floor once, I've slipped fifty dozen times. I'll settle this polishing business one of these fine days." Tho clatter of plates in the kitchen told him that his wife was up. Ho emerged from the bathroom and went back to tho bedroom to dress. En route, he noticed, grimly, that the hall-table had been tidied up, and that tho mat that had suddenly and without warning transformed itself into a toboggan had been rolled up and pointedly removed from his path. Evidently, 'ho thought, ho couldn't bo trusted to put his feet on it. "Humph!" ho grunted. Ho took a look at the cot before he went on with his dressing, and his face relaxed as he gazed down upon his sleeping heir, "lour little bag o' tricks," ho said softly, "I believe you've got your mother's nose, but it|s more like a pimple than a proboscis yet." Tho Post Office clock chimed the half-hour. "Holy smoke!" ho gasped. "I'll have to get a wriggle on. Where tho "

He pranced into tho hall. "Where's my clothes?" he called. His wife came into the hall, and looked at him. "Where you left them," she said, with chilling point. Then he remembered. He had been late at the office the night before, and out of deference to his wife's request not to wake the baby, had undressed in the dining-room, where hi 6 pyjamas had been laid out. "Another one in the eye," he said to himself. "She did mo that time." He was crawling about under the dining-room table, looking for his stud, when his wife came into the hall again. "When ARE you coming to breakfast?" she called. "Do you know the time?" A confused noise reached her ears, and she went back to the kitchen, her lips tightly compressed. "He won't be in a state to bo spoken to about anything soon," sho said to herself, as sho pushed the kettle further buck to simmer again. What Georgo had really said was that ho'd be there presently, and that he was perfectly well aware of tho fact that he was by this time nearly half an hour late, but the cover of the dining table had muffled his voice, garbing his accents in a semblance of subdued profanity. Breakfast was a scramble, and conversation, from various causes, scrappy and disconnected. Neither cared to look directly at the other. Several times George opened his mouth to say something about the broken neck that he had narrowly oscaped, but a glance at the clock, and the reflection that in the course of a necessarily "hurried debate his wife would probably have the last word, closed it again. Two letters lay beside his plate. "Do you think you could remember to post these as you do down?" "Myep," ho grunted, his mouth full of toast.

The Post Office clock chimed again, (110 looked up at tho kitchen clock. ■("Jumping snakes I" he snapped. "That clock's dotty, like everything else in this house. Where's my hat?" ' He jumped for the door, grabbed his hat, and bolted, while his wife sat back in her chair and heaved a sigh of relief. "What it is to be a man!" she said to herself, with" fine scorn. Then her eye fell on the two letters. "Gracious alive!" she exclaimed, "he's gone without the letters!" Sho jumped up, seized tho, letters, and (lew to the door. "Gee-orge!" she called. ( "Geeorge!" George, at the gate, heard an agonised voice, turned, and beheld a piteous face. "Holy smoke!" ho said to himself, in consternation. "I've forgotten to kiss her!" It was the first lapse since he had married her. and the catastrophe drove everything else out of his head. He tore back, caught her up in his arms, and whispered a lot of silly things which mustn't lm repeated. "Go away, silly," she said, laughing up at him, "or you'll be late." "Right-til" he said, gaily. "Tomorrow's Christmas, old girl, don't forget," "I know, I know," she said softly. "And you won't forget those letters, "•ill you now?" "No, by Jove! What did I do with 'em?" She pulled his tie straight, and gave him a pinch. , "You put them in your side pocket, you absent-minded mail." Did ho? Or did she? H-ml