A LIKELY STORY.

Observer, Volume 5, Issue 116, 2 December 1882, Page 184

A LIKELY STORY.

He was a suspicious man, and challenged the truth, of every statement. He "was, in fact, scepticism personified. It was perhaps his mate's tendency to invent scenes and circumstances too absurd for belief that banished his faith, particucularly in anything that his companion told him. However, he liked to hear a good yarn for pastime, and on his friend's return from the distant township of Mangonui, he inquired of him in the course of the evening, " Well, Joe, haven't you something interesting as usual to tell us about your journey ?" On being appealed to Joe arose, drank a pannikin of bush tea, killed a big black bug on the raupo side of the hut, and resuming his seat, with a far-away look in his eye, while the other regarded him with an incredulous smile, he began, " One evening in Mangonui I was looking from the mill up the green hill-side, meditating on the advance of industry upon scenes which yet retained some of their wild, primitive aspect, when I saw three tall, gaunt old women, the average age of whom, I calculate, might be sixty years, emerge playfully from a shanty, and they came skipping gleefully down the slope, their arms bare, but wrinkled, were entwined child-like around each other's waists, and — and they were merrily laughing and kissing one another's haggard cheeks." " Gk> on, Joe, go on, and take plenty of time and room." Joe directed a brief reflective stare at the fire, pei'haps to get over the interruption, and resumed, " One was dressed lightly in pink, as far as I can remember, another in blue, and a third in yellow — pure white I mean. Much I marvelled these sylphs to pee" " Not bad at all, Joe — go on." " Their grey locks floated in the breeze — no — let me see — were rather kept m order by — what-do-you-call-ems — forehead combs. One was called Katie, another Minnie, and the third Janey. They were provided appropriately with doll, skipping rope, and — a pet cat. A serious man, on seeing them, thus addressed them, " Women, have ye nothing else to do than to be running about like a parcel of school girls !" They were going to throw stones at him. One of them then said, " Oh, I must go into the store, and get some lollies !" and the second spitefully remarked, " Take care of your poor old teeth, dear," while the third bashfully asked me, "Do you know, young man, where we could get our likenesses taken ?" " I don't believe a word of it," snapped the j suspicious man vehemently. " Joe, I often warned you against imposing on my credulity !" " But the moral, Dickey, the moral !" " What is the moral ? What do you conclude, Joe?" "That even old age is not exempt from its vanities and conceits, exemplified in this second childishness, when the Three Grraces have become old maids." Dickey has marked another chalk under a number of white strokes on a long board to Joe, as he for a time bent upon him a look in which amusement and an appearance of severity were the contending expressions.