"You miserable, consumptive-looking ingrate. You sea-sick-looking,
despicable turkey hen; I'd like to kill you. You mean to rob me."
"You lie," shrieked Sim, now warmed up.
Then I had to run. He caught up a big glass case of butterflies and
heaved it in my direction.
But the way the butterflies flew wasn't a patch to the way I flew when
the porters got hold of me.
[Illustration]
Talking of wax men, puts me in mind of a fellow who lives in the flat
opposite mine.
He's about the most miserable specimen of a man I ever struck.
His wife is always quarreling with him; he's always quarreling with his
wife.
When he proposed to her he said, as we all have said:
"Darling, if you will only marry me, I will make you the best husband in
the world."
"Never fear, sweet," says she, "if I marry you, I'll make you that all
right, all right."
One afternoon, I heard her giving him a Sam Hill of a blow-up and met
him in the hall soon afterward.
"Say," says I, "why in thunder don't you assert your independence?"
"Independence," he wailed, "why she won't even grant me home rule."
"What were you scrapping about just now?" says I.
"Well, you see," says he, "when I married her I told her I delighted in
cleanliness. When I got home to-day, she told me she had just paid a
dollar to have the coal bin scrubbed out and we expect a load of coal
to-morrow. Then, too, she told me she had bought a dream of a hat at a
bargain, and I asked her whether there ever was a time she didn't get a
bargain, and she says: 'Yes, when I married you.'"
[Illustration]
Well, late that night the unhappy couple got to scrapping again, and the
worm turned and gave his wife a most unmerciful beating.