A LUCKY DOG.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 7 September 1916, Page 2

A LUCKY DOG.

I MAKE no apology for publishing this incident. The narrator, speaking to his friend, treated me as if I were nonexistent, though I sat at his elbow in the saloon bar of—well, somewhere- in Swndon. So if Matilda reads it, and there is trouble (as there will be) I have committed no breach of confidence.

His head was bandaged; but he waa able to get a glass of beer to his lips; and his air was blithe and jocund. " Yes," he said, continuing his conversation with his companion, " I'm a lucky one ; always fall on>tny feet." " You look as if you'd fallen on your head?" " I have, and that's how I fell on my feet, if you understand me." " Can't say I do." "You know that red-haired girl in our street —name of Parker, Maud Parker?" " Engaged to Smith, the chap manager of the Rose and Crown ?" J/fj} "That's the one. Well, she aname been carrying on a bit lately." '* How about Matilda ?" "Oh, I'm going to marry Matilda— that dressmaking business of hers; is doing fine. This other was just a bit of fun, poor passay lay torn, as the French | say;. And I give you my word she met me more than 'alf way. I think Smith. must have been neglecting her a bit, and she did it to rouse his dander>; and she did. He came to see me: in a redhot rage, and told me to leave his girl alone. And not satisfied with . that, he called on Matilda too. If your chap comes to see you looking as if he'd run against a lamp-post, he says to Matilda,, it'll mean, Miss, he's' been walking out again with my girl, and I've been remonstrating gently, but firmly with him." , "Of course I told Matilda it was all lies till she half believed me. But the - trouble was that Smith, with all his talk, kept "one important fact to himself." "What was that?"

" That he'd been a prize-fighter. , Didn't look it. Thought I could handle ;, him. That was why, the evening ' Matilda was seeing her cousins in Lewisham, I took Maud Parker to see the pictures. " Some kind friend must have told Smith, for he caught us just after we came out. ' Put "em up,' he said. , I did. Meant to knock him out, but he fore- - , stalled me. Outclassed I was. Hit the pavement' with my head three times inside three minutes, last time on edge v of the curb." ■ "I don't see where the luck came • in?" "Why, don't you see—but come to~ think of it, I forgot to tell you this happened Wednesday night. I was sitting up and feeling my head gingerly: it was just one big ache, when a Zepp came sailing along, and chuckejdia bomb " down within 50yds of me. Now do you tumble ?" "You didn't " " I'm one of the Zeppelin victims. Hospital treated me as such. Got fifty quid compensation from ' The Weekly Whoop,' and Matilda, of course, is sweet as sugar to me. That's why I say I'm the lucky one .... always fall on my feet, even if I don't look as if I had." '

—C. D. Leslie, in " L.0."