Humour.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 30, 3 February 1877, Page 2

Humour.

WON'T BE CAUGHT. • " It's a widow," groaned Mr. Bumble — Timothy Bumble, bachelor ; evidently Mr. j Bumble hadn't any especial love for wi- ! dows. " Here am I— an unsuspecting, mii nocent man, invited to come down visiting my brothei John, and, like a fool, I came ! down. Hardly do I step foot inside the door before I'm told that there's someone else coming — a widow — Belinda's dearest friend — and such a nice woman, and I see through it all in a minute. It's a plot ! They've got me down here for her to marry." Mr. Bumble broke out in a cold sweat at the idea. "And now she's here," went on Mr. Bumble, shaking his fist at something in the comer — an imaginary widow, perhaps. " She's here, and I'll be persecuted and pestered from morning till night. She j knows, of course, that John and his wife are willing to help ber along in her wickedness. I wish," and Mr. Bumble began to wax eloquent in his earnestness, " I wish there was a law abolishing widows." John came in pretty soon. " Are you ready ?" he asked. "Yes, I s'pose so," answered his brother. " But I tell you what it is, John, I won't marry her." " Maybe she wouldn't have you," laughed John. " You can't cram that down my throat," exclaimed Mr. Bumble, explosively. He followed his brother down like a , lamb led to the sacrifice. But he remembered afterwards geeing something in the shape of a woman rise up aa they entered the parlour, and hearing John say something. Then the shape swooped down upon him like a hawk upon a dove, and for ten minutes thereafter all was blank to him. When he regained his scattered senses — it always affected him in this way to be introduced to women, especially widows — he found himself sitting before her w ith meekly-folded hands, while she was talking away at a fearful rate. She was strong-minded, he discovered, with a cold shiver of foreboding. Nothing cooing or dove-like about her. " I do think," vociferated Mrs. Blake, laying her hand on Mr. Bumble's knee, by way of emphasis, "I do think that we poor women have rights that you men are bound to respect. Don't you ?" Mrs. Blake turned her eaglo eyes full on Mr. Bumble, as if defying and daring him to deny it. " Undoubtedly," admitted Mr. Bumble, faintly. "Yes, undoubtedly," repeated Mrs. Blake. " You show good sense in making that admission, and I like you for it." Mr. Bumble regretted that he had made it. " Dear !" exclaimed the poor man that night. " I'm afraid she'll get me cornered up and marry me yet." His sleep was haunted with widows. One leaned from the headboard to pull his hair, and one shook her fist at him from the footboard, while one leaned over the bed and requested him to kiss her. Not another wink of sleep did he get that night ' Oh," Mr. Bumble," cried the widow at breakfast, " there's a lovely view from the hill, Belinda says. I want you to come and show it to me." " I'm in for it, I'm afraid," he groaned. " She'll propose before we get back. She believes in rights. Maybe proposing is one of them. If she should propose, I know I wouldn't dare to say no." .__^)hJhjU^vaHdJ^ a week

"She won't hurt you," averred Mr. Bumble. " Shoo, shoo !" The animal didn't "shoo," but came nearer. " Oh !" shrieked Mrs. Blake, flinging her arms about tho poor, unprotected man. "Save me." " You old brute." Let us hope, for the sake of the bachelor's gallantry, that he refened to the cow and not the widow. " You old brute ! g'long off with you," and he succeeded in putting the cow to the rout. " How shall I repay you ?" sobbed the widow. "My lifelong gratitude is yours." "Don't," said the bachelor, evidently greatly touched. «• 'Taint worth speaking of. You're welcome." "I feel faint ; I'll have to lean on you," sighed the widow, and he had to help her home. He expected shod try to faint and fall into his arms every minute, but he hurried her over the ground at such a rapid rate that she hadn't time to. " It's getting desperate," he thought, as ho reviewed the events of the day ; " a widow 'li bring things to a crisis in no time." The next night there was a party. Mr. Bumble had to see the widow home. But it wasn't because he wanted to. He tried hard enough to shirk the duty, and was detected by his brother sneaking off round the corner, and brought back to the widow. "It reminds me of a night when Mr. Blake walked home with me before we were married," said the widow, and gave signs of being about to dissolve in tears. Mr. Bumble could stand anything but that. " I'd like to have you come to Croydon," •he burst out, at a loss what to say, and so saying the first thing that popped into his head. " Would you ?" said the widow, clinging closer than a brother. " I would like to come and see you. I might stay for life." " There, I've put my foot in it this time," thought the poor man. " It't coming." " Dear me, what have I said ?" cried the widow. "I'm so impulsive. What can you think of me ?" Mr. Bumble tried tc say something, but the words stuck in hia throat, and produced a rumble like distant thunder. " You wish I would ? Was that what you said?" asked the widow. "Dear me !" "I — I didn't say so," responded the bachelor, despairingly. "You misunderstood me, ma'am." Ho tried to shake her off at the parlour door when they got home, but she coaxed him in while he was blaming himself for letting her do it ; and there ho sat and suffered for three mortal hours. More than once he thought the awful moment had come, but something — Providence he called it — helped to avert the fate which must havo been his if she had spoken, and he congratulated himself when lie reached his chamber that he was spared to freedom yet a little longer. He went to bed and dreamed. He thought Mrs. Blake came and informed him that she was going to marry him at half-past ten. tor uion ow. He woke in a clammy perspiration. It was terribly real. Then he dreamed that he ran away to avoid her, but she followed him, and put her arms about his neck and hugged him, saying — " Oh, you foolish man. To think you could get away from a widow when she'd made up her mind to marry you." He got up and dressed himself. " I won't stay under this roof another night," he declared. "It ain't safe." Ten minutes after someone knocked at John's door. " I'm going home," exclaimed Mr. Bumble. " Train goes in fifteen minutes. Goodbye." '"But, Timothy." " 'Taint no use. I wouldn't stay for anything. I'm going," and he was off. " You look beat out," declared his old housekeeper on his arrival at home. " I am," said he. " I tell you what 'tis, Betsey, I ain't going away from home again till I know it's safe. I've been persecuted. If any women come here, tell 'em I'm dead, or got a fever, but don't you let 'em in." Mr. Bumble confidently expected the widow would follow him. But she oidu't. He hasn't been out of Croydon since that time. He doesn't think'it safe to do so. He won't be caught.