rown and her husband entered through the light that
streamed out of the open door her arms were around him, and her face
upturned to his.

THE HOTEL EXPERIENCE OF MR. PINK FLUKER

BY RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON (1822-1898)

[From _The Century Magazine_, June, 1886; copyright, 1886, by The
Century Co.; republished in the volume, _Mr. Absalom Billingslea, and
Other Georgia Folk_ (1888), by Richard Malcolm Johnston (Harper &
Brothers).]

I

Mr. Peterson Fluker, generally called Pink, for his fondness for as
stylish dressing as he could afford, was one of that sort of men who
habitually seem busy and efficient when they are not. He had the
bustling activity often noticeable in men of his size, and in one way
and another had made up, as he believed, for being so much smaller
than most of his adult acquaintance of the male sex. Prominent among
his achievements on that line was getting married to a woman who,
among other excellent gifts, had that of being twice as big as her
husband.

"Fool who?" on the day after his marriage he had asked, with a look at
those who had often said that he was too little to have a wife.

They had a little property to begin with, a couple of hundreds of
acres, and two or three negroes apiece. Yet, except in the natural
increase of the latter, the accretions of worldly estate had been
inconsiderable till now, when their oldest child, Marann, was some
fifteen years old. These accretions had been saved and taken care of
by Mrs. Fluker, who was as staid and silent as he was mobile and
voluble.

Mr. Fluker often said that it puzzled him how it was that he made
smaller crops than most of his neighbors, when, if not always
convincing, he could generally put every one of them to silence in
discussions upon agricultural topics. This puzzle had led him to not
unfrequent ruminations in his mind as to whether or not his vocation
might lie in something higher than the mere tilling of the ground.
These ruminations had lately taken a definite direction, and it was
after several conversations which he had held with his friend Matt
Pike.

Mr. Matt Pike was a bachelor of some thirty summers, a foretime clerk
consecutively in each of the two stores of the village, but latterly a
trader on a limited scale in horses, wagons, cows, and similar objects
of commerce, and at all times a politician. His hopes of holding
office had been continually disappointed until Mr. John Sanks became
sheriff, and rewarded