The Argosy — page 298: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

277 AN INCIDENT ON JUBILEE NIGHT. By H. FELL. Beebe a good fellow Joe Rayner was, and who knew this so well as his little wife, Marjory! They had been married two years now, and she could truly say that during that time no unkind word had fallen from his lips, and no small kindness towards her had been neglected. But Marjory was a good wife and deserved all the happiness she enjoyed. The young couple were comfortably enough off for beginners, living in a small, cosy house, some distance out of town, where, with good management, they contrived to give some very neat little dinners to Joe’s friends when he brought them down from London. But lately there had been no entertaining at The Hutch, for a small stranger had arrived, and since then Mr. and Mrs. Rayner, as well as the nursemaid, had been fully occupied in entertaining him ! Things were settling down a bit now, for the child, who had been extremely delicate at his birth, was getting stronger. Still he was a wee, fragile-looking creature, and, as his parents leant over his cradle at night and watched his tiny face with its delicate pencilled eye- brows—so unusual in an infant—and its sweet regular features, they each felt, though they would not have said so for worlds, that it would be a difficult task to rear him. But what love and devotion were they not willing to spend upon him! On the boy’s account Marjory, for the first time in her married life, had left her husband and gone to the sea-side with baby for three weeks. On the boy’s account they refused a most tempting invitation they could both have accepted, to go for a cruise on the Norfolk Broads ; for his sake Marjory watched and waked at night, and—greatest self-sacrifice of all—for his sake Joe gave up smoking in his bedroom or, indeed, anywhere upstairs. He would have given it up altogether if the doctor had suggested that such self-denial could possibly do the youngster any good. On the evening of the 2oth June, 1887, Joe Rayner came back from the office a bit earlier than usual, and going straight up to the nursery, found his wife sitting there on a low stool, the child on her lap, and “ Moosie,” the favourite large white angora pussy, in her privileged spot on the hearthrug. Joe threw himself down into an arm-chair and said with a sigh of relief : “Well, I for one am ready enough to rejoice that the Queen has reigned for fifty years, since it means an off-day for me to-morrow.” “Oh, Joe, I am so glad! And now we will have a long morning at home with the boy, and in the afternoon you can take me to the common to see the frolic.” VOL, XLVI. T DOOKS CON” (2) (C(O)