SMILES IN THE VESTRY.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 125, 24 December 1915, Page 2 (Supplement)

SMILES IN THE VESTRY.

When I leave the altar steps, and the (more or less) happy couple follow me to the vestry, and in their train n selection of relatives and friends, there i 6 always the chance of something happening. I'm not a dour parson, with a sepulchral voice, and a funereal air. Give me something to laugh at, for preference. The gods ar© generally kind. I get it. One bridegroom, directly he was inside the vestry, turned to the bride and gave her a resounding kiss 1 on the lips. "Darling!" he heaved, in ecstasy. And she, with blushing face, flung her. self into his arms, pressed her rosy lips to his, and murmured "Husband!" No, that's where you're wrong! What she did do was to give him a resounding smack on th© face. Plonk! " You know what that's for!" she said. I think he did, for he had kept her waiting in the porch for over ten minutes. The registers were signed in silence, and the poor man left the church with one side of his face white, and the other marked with four angry red stripes. I wondered ho wthe wedding breakfast would go.

In churches where there is a clerk, especially if that gentleman belongs to the old brigade, he is much to the fore. One had a horrible habit of waiting until the registers were complete, and then, instead of allowing a minute or so for the inevitable kisses, smashed the romance of th© occasion to pieces by demanding in a disagreeable, almost threatening voice: "Seven and six, please! It jarred.

BY OUR CLERICAL CONTRIBUTOR.

(From "Pearson's Weekly.")

"Fee!" said the clerk. "Toss you double or quits, old chap?" said the bridegroom. That most respectable old clerk was mightily shocked. "We don't ,want that sort of talk here," he said severely. "Seven and six, please!" "Come on, parson," said the bridegroom, turning to me. "You're a sport. Double or quits!" It was relieved from my desire to justify my sportsmanship, tempered by an inward quaking that I might be on the "quits" side of the seven end six, and not the "double," by the bridesayng decisively: " Stow it, Bill, and pay him, do you near?" Bill, grumbling, paid. His parting shot at the old clerk was: "Good day, Rothschild!" On another occasion when bride and bridegroom had signed the nrsv register (they are in duplicate) I called for witnesses. A very sour-faced lady came forward. I had noticed that she had said nothing in the vestry, but had sat with tightly-closed lips and a most disagreeable expression. She took the pen, and looked at the entries already made. The bride had given her age as twenty-eight. "You hussy!" said the sour-faced lady. "I knew you'd never see twentythree agan'n! You was afraid to keep your lies up here. You "

" That'll do, mother," said the bridegroom. "You may be my mother, but Lizzie's my wife, and don't you forget it. You say any more, and them chest of drawers go! At which awful threat ii« good lady subsided. It turned out later that the son owned a chest of drawers, which lie had allowed' his mother to keep in her home.

Finally, what tickles me to death, as they 6ay, is to study signatures. This is the sort of thing which is not uncom. mon—