IN TOWN AND OUT

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 60, 2 June 1927, Page 4

IN TOWN AND OUT

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NOTES

Mr. and Mrs. M. MacFarlane, of Hastings, have arrived in Auckland and are staying at the Grand Hotel. * # * Among the guests staying at the Central Hotel are Mr. and Mrs. O. J. Wilson, of Wellington.

Mr. and Mrs. R. Hatrick are in Auckland and are staying at the Grand Hotel.

Mr. and Mrs. Campbell, of Hawke’s Bay, arrived in Auckland by the Limited express this morning and are staying at the Grand Hotel.

Among the guests staying at the Grand Hotel are Mr. and Mrs. N. Lethridge, of Te Awamutu. Mr. and Mrs. J. McKnight, of Timaru, arrived from the South this morning and are staying at the JRoyal Hotel. Among the guests that are staying at the Royal Hotel are Mr. and Mrs. A. Carlsow, of Owhango. Passengers on the Limited express this morning included Mr. and Mrs. S. J. Davis, of Matamata, who are to spend a few days in Auckland. They are staying at the Royal Hotel. * * * Alma Gluck, the famous singer, has sailed from Vancouver in the Aorangi. * * * Mr. and Mrs. McNair have arrived in Auckland from Te Awamutu and are staying at the Albert Hotel. Among the guests staying at the Albert Hotel are the Misses Corbett, of Hikutaia. * * * Mr. and Mrs. G. Smith, of Matakohe. arrived in Auckland this morning and are staying at the Albert Hotel. Mr. and Mrs. Alan Smith, of Rotorua, are among the guests staying at the Albert Hotel. Mrs. J. M. Carpenter, of Remuera, has returned from a visit to Rotorua. ♦ * * Mrs. E. Caradus, of Hataitai, has left Wellington on a visit to Auckland. Mr. and Mrs. R. Wylie, of Wellington, are paying a visit to Auckland. The Misses E. and C. Bayly, of Wanganui, are staying at the Hotel Cargen. * ale Mrs. Williams and Miss Williams, of St. John’s Hill, Wanganui, are visiting Auckland. * * * Mrs. Cameron Smith, of Christchurch, has arrived from Rotorua and is staying at the Grand Hotel. * * * Mrs. and Miss Alice Macassey have returned to Wellington after a holiday spent in Auckland. Mrs. H. W. Frost, who has been spending two months’ holiday in Wellington, has returned to Auckland. * * * Mrs. Errol Mackersey, of Te Kuiti, is visiting Auckland, and is staying with her mother, Mrs. W. A. Cumming. * * * Miss A. M. Behrens, Girl Guide Commissioner for the North of England, is arriving in Auckland on Friday and will stay at the Grand Hotel. * * * Miss Cameron, of Whariti, Titirangi, and Miss Mabel New ton, Hokianga, are leaving by the Maunganui on Tuesday on a visit to Suva and Honolulu. Visitors for the races who will stay at the Hotel Cargen include Mr. and Mrs. T. Coverdale, Te Kawa; Dr. and Mrs. A. W. Beveridge, Hamilton, and Mr. and Mrs. P. D. Russell, Gisborne. Mrs. Cameron Smith, of Christchurch, who has been visiting Rotorua has arrived in Auckland and is at the Grand Hotel. Mr. Justice Reed and Mrs. Reed are arriving from the South on Saturday and will stay at the Hotel Cargen. Mrs. L. M. Pearson, of Wellington, is at present a visitor to Auckland. * # A Press Association cablegram from Rome says that a commission for moralising women’s dress is inviting 3,000,000 young unmarried Italians to pledge themselves to dress in Italian fashion and ban all immodest attire. If they do so the commission will allow

them to take part in public lotteries, and also have two free tickets, and the winner of a certain number will receive a bride’s trousseau and a railway ticket to any European resort chosen for the honeymoon.

Miss Evelyn Giesen, of Dannevirke. is visiting Auckland as the guest of Mrs. L. C. Rathbone, Victoria Avenue. Remuera.

MUNDANE MUSINGS

THE CRIME

Nothing Blinks had ever had seemed to have given her as much pleasure as the common clothes peg which Cook gave her carelessly one wet morning. Blinks took it to her heart, christened it Peggies, and devoted herself to it for a whole day. We heard at intervals cries of triumph and delight: “Made Peggies a face!” “Made Peggies a fwock!” “Made Peggies a nightdwess! ” “Made Peggies a bed!” The bed was a masterpiece. It was made out of an old cardboard box and various oddments which Blinks scrounged from the rag-bag. It contained an (alleged) mattress, sheets, blankets, a lurid coverlet which I recognised as having once been a component of a drawing-room cushion, lace curtains which I recognised as having once helped to screen our landing window from the world’s gaze—■ the whole decorated by Blinks’s gigantic stitches. Blinks is a great sewer, but is unaware what really refined hemming should look like. Hers is of the blatant type. She herself admires it.

Peggles’s wardrobe also was formed of odds and ends salvaged from the rag-bag and held together by Blinks’s Gargantuan sweeps of cotton. All day long (for a whole herd of cyclones was ranging the country) Blinks sat crooning happily over Peggies and turning out horrible costumes and bed clothes from loud bits of silk or muslin. She even made her a nightdress case. And at the end of the day when bed-time came she lqissed the horrible face which she had drawn upon the peg top in indelible pencil, dressed the creature in its horrible sack of a nightdress, and laid it in its bumpy-looking couch beneath its lurid silk coverlet and between its wildly cobbled curtains, and gazed rapturously upon her handiwork. “Darlin’ Peggies!” she said, “Blinks loves her. Blinks made all her sings.” It was Blinks’s birthday the next week and Blinks’s mother said to me: “It was so pathetic to see how she loved that wretched little bed she made for that clothes peg. Let’s get her a really nice doll’s bed. She’ll adore it.” It seemed a sound scheme, so we did. It was a gem of a bed with a real mattress, dainty sheets and blankets, and the prettiest little green silk curtains and coverlet you ever saw. Moreover, it had an occupant—a goldenhaired lady in a silk nightdress with clothes neatly folded at the foot of the bed. Blinks received it in an awestruck manner and thanked us in an awestruck voice. “Let’s leave her with it,” said Blinks’s mother, “she’s absolutely overwhelmed with joy.” So we left her with it. After a bit I crept back to see what was happening. Blinks was still sitting on the floor at a respectful distance from it. gazing at it awefully. I went away but returned after a few minutes. Blinks was playing with it. She was taking the golden-haired doll out of bed, dressing her, then undressing her and putting her back, crooning rather dejectedly. “Lady, get up . . . lady go to bed.” But there Weis no life in the voice. •Blinks was obviously depressed. And suddenly I saw what was wrong with the thing. It was too perfect. It left nothing to the imagination. It demanded nothing of the ingenuity. Becoming myself dejected at this appalling discovery I crept away again. But after a few minutes I returned. I couldn’t help it. The situation fascinated me. Before I reached the door I heard Blinks’s voice, this time with all its old joy and zest. Cautiously I peeped through the crack of the door. A horrible sight met my eyes. Blinks had transformed the “lady” into a sheep by the simple expedient of tying round her the white woolly rug from the dolls’ house and setting her ignominiously upon hands and legs. Blinks had —Oh horror!—dismantled the bed and deliberately broken off the barred ends. With these and the sides she was making a pen for the “sheep.” “Nice house for baa-lamb,” she sang.' joyously, as she arranged the broken bits of bed to form a neat little pen. Then she tore down the green silk curtains and placed them inside. “Nice gwass for baa-lamb,” she chanted, exultantly. Tossing the other bedclothes contemptuously aside, she took the blankets and began to roll them to represent small sheep. With bits of the broken bedstead she made legs for them. “Baby baa-lambs for baa-lambs,” she screamed in gleeful triumph, setting them inside the pen. It was criminal. It was monstrous It was worthy of the most condign punishment known in the annals of the nursery. But I suddenly understood- ... I crept noiselessly awa'). —RICHMAL CROMPTON.