How She Told the Latest Joke.
Mrs. Jason came home the other evening with her face "wreathed in smiles," as the novelists have it.
"Well, what are you grinning at?" was the cordial greeting of her lord and master.
"I heard something funny down town," she answered.
"Well, what was it?"
"Oh, nothing much. I happened to meet little Johnny Figg, who used to keep the apple stand across the way, you know, and he's got a better one down town now. I asked him how he was getting along and he says to me, 'Oh, I'm still keeping a stand, you see.' I thought it was the cutest thing I had heard for a good while."
"Oh, you did, did you, Maria? If I ever see where the laugh comes in I'll try and smile, even if I have to get up in the middle of the night to do so," was his crushing reply, to which she deigned no answer.
About two o'clock in the morning Mr. Jason was awakened from a dream of being stabbed by a masked assassin, to find his wife energetically nudging him below the fifth rib.
"Oh, Jehiel, I had that wrong," she twittered, in a tone of one who has made a great discovery. "Johnny said his business was at a stand still. You see the point now, don't you?"
"Yes, I reckon so," said the old man in no gracious tones, "and if I feel the point of your infernal elbow jabbing me in the ribs any more to-night I'll go to sleep in the barn. Do you hear?"
"And he didn't laugh either as he promised to," was her reflection as she settled down to sleep again with the sweet consciousness of duty performed.
—Terre Haute Express.