BRILLIANT SHORT STORY.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 117, 19 January 1915, Page 3

BRILLIANT SHORT STORY.

THE LOVE 01 WOMAN. It seemed Like old times to go into the little bakery and see Mrs. Brown ’s comfortable figure behind the counter, for during her illness I had grown acquainted to being served by Lily White, •the pretty, slim-young assistant, while Mr. Brown, hitherto obvious only in church, would hover superfloualy. But, on drawing nearer, I saw that Mrs. Brown’s usual cheeriness of expression was replaced by a look of blank bewilderment, and my innocent hope that Mr. Brown was -well earned me a torrent of words that brought me almost to the same dazed condition. "What, Miss, you don’t know then? Well, I might have guessed.it, for Saturday is always your day for the dough cake. But them others, they’re just trying to ferret it out, so the shop bell’s gone continuous, and the run on halfpenny buns has been something tremenjous. Each one’s come in saying, pleased like, "And this is sad news I hear, Mrs. Brown,’’ but I’ve put them off with a "Yes, there is a rise in flour,’’ so they’ve gone away no wiser than they come. But I can’t see that it’s anyone’s business but mine—mine and his —and hers. Perhaps I didn’t ought to speak of it to you, but you’ve always been pleasant, and it do seem so strange, my ’usband such a family man and steady weren’t the word for it; why, he was a teetotaler from the cradle, as one might say. When I got his letter I thought he must be joking.

"Dear Mother/ he began. He’s always called me mother since our elddest boy was born five and twenty years come March the twelth, and now I’d hardly know myself by any other name, 'Dear Mother. I find I can’t live without Lily White. I am taking her away, so shall never se you more. Ever your affectionate husband and well-wisher, James Brown. P.S. Everything is arranged satisfactory, and you and Jimmy won’t want. ’

"Even then I didn’t take it in, Miss. I thought that he must be wishful to adopt Lily, to which I’m sure I’d have been agreeable, for I’ve always had a weakness for gells, and my three has all been boys, as is mostly the way. Besides, I took a fancy to Lily and her j pretty ways from the first minute I < over sot eyes upon her. I remember T wern’t sure if James might ’nt think her ) a bit too flighty for his taste, for he never could bear them fast sort, not even when he was young. He said what first made him take notice of me was my being out the way sensible, though perhaps it isn’t for me to speak of it. "However, it seems I was mistook. I could see, of course, that he took a like to Lily, but as for lovering and suchlike the thought never entered my head any more than him going back to tops and me to dolls. Why, I thought that half of his liking for Lily was a makebelieve to let me leave him easy-mind-ed, for after my illness I had to go away, you recollect, Miss; yes, and I took Jimmy with me. "That’s another thing I can’t understand. He was always so fond of Jimmy, he being the baby like, for the other two were big boys at school before he come. And he were never over strong, either, and that made us spoil him the more. Why, every evening set the boy on hm knee and read him things out of books, poetry, and playpieces. I don’t make much account of books myself, fer it seems a sad waste of time, to sit idling after that fashion. But at nights, of course, a person isn’t fit for much better, only I’m inclined to be a bit ’eavy after supper, and thy sound of reading always sends me off. 'A deaf man could hear mother taking forty winks,’ was always James’s joke. "These last few evenings, I must say. I noticed that James were out of sorts, so I made him take a black powder. his digestion never being over strong. No, we neither of us has anv faith in these new-fangled drugs, with no body nor yet taste, let alone smell. Give me castor oil that don’t slip down s>* easy as it can’t have time to do good on the way. " That's another thing, that worrits me, ho never took his drops with him, j but his bed socks he has got. I’m thank- j : ful to say, for I looked particular, lie ! being' a martyr to chilblains. He must have packed them on the quiet in the new portmanteau, and the trouble he’ll have had over it, for it’a always been me that’s done the packing, having a gift that way, though I don’t ought fo mention it. Curiously enough, jus yesterday I wan looking for his Sunday shirt-links to give them a rub up, it being my day for cleaning the silver epergny in the parlour. You must have noticed it, Miss. It was a wedding present from my aunt, "who kept a dressmaking establishment In Bond. Street. Oh, she J was quite tho lady, and wore stays 1 made of satin, which always seems to • me a sinful waste, particular as she I was single, so it eouldn’t have been | nothing but inward pride. "Well, as I was saying, when I come to look for the links they was gon* from the box, which has always stood in the right hand back corner of our washstand drawer. So I went down to James, and he seemed a bit confused and said they must bo stolen. I was in a terrible taking, and was for getting a defective immediate, but James said wait, and give the thief a chaneo of replacng them* Do you know, Miss, I’ve felt badly about jfc BiDce; : I bajrd*

ly even like to tell you, but I suspected Lily. All through dinner I went on £0 about stealing and such like, talking at her, so to speak, that the poor girl ended by crying.

"What’s that you say, Miss? Don’t I feel as if she had stolen something from me? No, Miss, I don’t. It’s not my James she’s got, nor yet my place. How could she be to him what I have been? And that puts me in mind, she don’t know about his not eating cloves. Tho least ite in a tart turns .on his stomach. Strange, isn’t it, how one person can enjoy a thing and to another it’s like poison? If only I knew what sort of a landlady James has got I’d not be so "worried, for he’s such a one for his little comforts, and some of them are perfect ’arpies. The food they gives you would sicken a dog, and as for the sheets, they're that damp you might wring out bucketfuls. And Lily's such a child. That's what makes me not able to take it in, nor yet believe it. For it’s such a long, long time since James , and I were young like her, and walked out and that, and even then he couldn’t see no sense in grown-up people to be for ever kissing and hugging. Sometimes I used to wish he wern’t quite so sensible. Girls do care about that sort of thing, though they may pretend they don’t. Sometimes I think they cares more than men, and it’s because it means more like to them that they ain’t so given to it.

"What troubles me most is that I don’t feel I’ve done my duty b'y Lily. She’s so young, you see, Miss; not yet eighteen, and pretty as a picture. It was harder like for her than it ever was for an ’omely one like me. She bad no mother neither, nor nobody to speak a friendly w r ord for her. save me. 1 feci as if I m to Llano for her gein*. wrong like this. And then if a baby comes, what will the poor girl do, being little better than one herself, and not a woman to help her? Oh, Miss, what am I saying? The fact is I don’t seem to understand, I don’t take in even now that it’s James —James, my ’usband! I can’t believe it; I can’t I can’t.

"Oh, the money part of it, that’s all right; James has settled everything up to a halfpenny, and sold the business, it appears, for the gentleman’s been here about it this morning. I’m to have two-third 3. which seems very handsome, and the rest is to be paid into his bank, for be ain’t left no address. He’s even taken two berths in the next boat for Canada, on approval, as it were, for me and Jimmy. It’s there that my second boy lives, the one that isn't married. He’s always been wanting mo to go and visit him, though he said he knew it was no manner of use, for I wouldn’t leave father and the biz. Well they’ve left me, it seems. It ’a odd, Miss, to think I should be going away at my age, &ice bertha they are, the gentleman says, and James has taken them in the middle of the ship like, so that, it should be a bit steadier. I. expect he were thinking of that trip we took to Margate, when the boys wore little, which is all the voyages I’ve been, James he ate hearty all the way, down to curried lobster, but I couldn’t so much as look at a winkle. I were in a sad way, and that’s a fact, until James he says at last 'Cheer up, Mother, it’s more blessed to give than to receive.’ He weren’t much given to joking, but when ha did bring his mind to it, he could say a real clever thing like that, and many’s the time we’ve laughed over it since.

"Well, it do seem strange to think that’s all done with now, all them little jokes and rubbing up the Sunday links and such like. Each thing ain’t much in itself, but taken all together for such a many year, they do seem to bind two people together wonderful. Of course, I knew that some day the tie must be broke, but I always believed it would be for me to go first, not being over strong of late, and so I prayed in my heart, but not on my lips, for that seemed selfish like. But now I wonder if he’d have felt it like a blessing, and that seems the hardest of it all.

"Oh, there comes them parlours from over the way, and I’ll bo bound it’s a halfpenny bun they're making for, the interfering old maids! Well, it was very good of you, Miss, to talk to me so long—you’ve quite comforted me. But I think men must be made different from us, and that’s all I seem to understand. You’ll drop in again, won’t you, before I sail? I told you I always liked gells.’—E. Ayrton Zangwill in Westminster Gazette.