The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-12-13
MIR. rHEMrsrocLEs BoBBIN.
CHAPTER I.

OOWn 10 supper OuC CNculDky JuSt Onc year after their marriage, in by no means the best of spirits. They had married hastily, and, not following out the old adage by repenting at leisure, were inn patient in their regret. They first met one night at ball given for the benefit of the flood sufferers, and having con- tributed their mite toward the relief of those unfortunate people, fell, as they imagined, in love with each other. Four days later they were married by little squint-eyed preacher who failed to re- turn any change when Themistocles Bobbin handed him-with slight four ish of ostentation-a fifty dollar note. Bobbin had smaller notes or rather one oth CT of the X denomination, but the re- port that he was rather shiftless, having found circul lation, he preferred to offer the large note in the presence ofthe com pany and then hear the minister the very man who had started the report say, " Indeed, my dear sir, have you no smaller bills It is quite impossible for me to change this one p Then Bobbin would have said, " An, let me see? Yes. here is one," with which reply he would have handed out ten dollars and posed as a capitalist but the preacher made DO such remark. He exhibited no surprise Thanking Bobbin, he "pushed the money into his clothes" as the swindled bridegroom afterwards expressed it, and soon found his way to the dining room where he proceeded to do injustice to chicken salad and other indigestible food
 Bobbin and his wife did not get along we'll together. They were both inclined to be literary, woeful state of affairs, it must be confessed. Bobbin made pre- tense of practicing law, but he never had but one client and he dumped his bail, :" and, of course, ran away without paying anything. This disgusted Bobbin with the criminal practice. Mrs. Carrie Bob bin was strikingly handsome. Her great brown eyes were expressive of deep sym pathy-sympathy for her own little whims and the impossible characters of her foolish little stories.
 You look gloomy this evening, Carrie, :" said Bobbin while he and his wife sat at the supper table just one year from the time the preacher had pocketed his fifty dollars.
 "l have enough to make me gloomy" she replied, spreading with a lavish white hand a pretty liberal "cut" of butter on biscuit
 Haven't lost anything, have you ?" asked the husband with nook anxiety.
 "I'd like to know how l could lose anything. We must possess before we lose"
 Sententious, surely, but dida't know but that you had found something while l was down town and had lost it"
 "Oh, see. You didn't know but my only client had run away with the dish pan"
 Sarcastic, by my green bag, you are.''
 "Green bag" she contemptuously re peated. "I should like to Lnow what you want of green bag. should think that a green thumb-stall would be quite sufficient to contain all the documents needed in your practice"
 Look here, was only joking, but I see that you are angry"
 "l am not angry, anything of the kind.' )
 "What do you mean by that? No, angry anything of the kind. Fine sen. tence must say. Is that the way your pink-eyed heroines talk ?"
 "Mine talk quite as well as yours do, thank you"
 ooh, you are under no obligations, whatever. Let me see, what was you, last story2 Frost Bitten Geraldine, ol the Turnip that wouldn't roll up hill p Is that it?"
 "Makes no difference, it wasn't re jected by the editor of a humorous paper"
 "Ah, you think you are awful smart That's a very poor cut at me. never had the editor of village paper to tell me to please send my contributions to a rival paper"
 "I wouldn't live with such beast as you are," she said, showing back he, chair. You are nothing but kinkey. headed beast, and you know it." } "Now, here madam, if you think tha, want to live with you, why you have simply made a mistake in the solution ot household problem" "What did you marry me for, then p Because we both happened to be there at the same time, suppose"