"Jus' like ole times, when we was courtin' together," continued the lady. "If it 'adn't been for a bronze-topped barmaid comin' between us, what might 'ave been! ah, what might 'ave been!"

This tender reminiscence prompted the lady to sing, "Come to me, sweet Marie," with incidental attempts at a step-dance. The finale brought us to Benbow Avenue.

"I shall speak to her husband and caution him severely about his wife's conduct," said Granby to me.

I shrank into the background ready to move off directly the oration began.

Granby knocked at the door and it opened.

"I have brought your wife home in a state—" he began.

"Ain't I 'ad a nice young man to take me for a walk while you've been sitting guzzling by the fire?"

"You been taking my missis for a walk," said the indignant husband.

"I am a magistrate and a special constable—" began Granby.

"More shame to you. It's the likes of you 'oo disgraces the upper clarses."

"Shut the door, Bill," said the lady. "Don't lower yourself by talking to 'im. I never could abide a man as smelt o' gin meself."

The door slammed and Granby strode towards me.

"The ingratitude of the lower classes is disgraceful. I am tempted to despair of the State when I think of it. The only way is to let these occurrences pass into oblivion, to set oneself resolutely to forget them as if they had never been."

I agreed; but since then Granby has always eyed me curiously. I think he suspects that I am not forgetting resolutely enough.

A Field Officer writes: "Yesterday I was saluted by an Australian private. It was a great day for me."

THE WHITE HOUSE MYSTERY.

UNCLE SAM. "SAY, JOHN, SHALL WE HAVE A DOLLAR'S WORTH?"

Enthusiast. "AS A PATRIOT, MADAM, WILL YOU SIGN THE ROLL OF HONOUR OF 'THE NO-SUPERFLUOUS-TRAVEL-BUT-GIVE-UP-YOUR-SEATS-TO-SOLDIERS-AND-SAILORS-AS-MUCH-AS-POSSIBLE LEAGUE'?"

THE WATCH DOGS.

LIV.

My Dear Charles,—What about this Peace? I suppose that, what with your nice new Governments and all, this is the very last thing you are thinking of making at the moment. I wouldn't believe that the old War was ever going to end at all if it wasn't for the last expert and authoritative opinion I hear has been expressed by our elderly barber in Fleet Street. At the end of July, 1914, he told me confidentially, as he snipped the short hairs at the back of my head, that there was going to be no war; the whole thing was just going to fizzle out. Now he says it is going to be a very, very long business, as he always thought it would.

I find it difficult to maintain consistently either the detached point of view, in which one discusses it as if it was a European hand of bridge, or the purely interested point of view, in which one regards it only as a matter affecting one's individual comfort. I know a Mess, well up in the Front where they measure the mud by feet, in which they were discussing the War raging at their front door as if it had nothing to do with them beyond being a convenient thing to criticise. Men who were then likely to be personally removed at any moment by it saw nothing in the progress of it to be depressed about. As the evening wore on and they all came to find that they knew much more about the subject than they supposed, they were prepared to increase the allowance of casualties in pressing the merits of their own pet schemes. No gloom arose from the possibility that this generous offer might well include their own health and limbs. There was no gloom; there was even no desire to change the subject. Indeed, the better to continue it they called for something to drink. There was nothing to drink, announced the Mess Orderly. Why was there nothing to drink? asked the Mess President, advocate of enormous offensives on a wide front for an indefinite period of years, if need be. The Mess Orderly explained that more drink was on order, it had not arrived because of difficulties of carriage. Why were there difficulties of carriage? Because of the War. "Confound the War," said the Mess President. "It really is the most infernal nuisance."

I know a Captain Jones, resident a cottage on the road to the trenches (he calls this cottage his "Battle Box"), whose mind was very violently moved from the impersonal to the personal point of view by a quite trifling incident. He has one upstairs room for office, bedroom, sitting, reception and dining room. His meals are brought over to him by his servant from an estaminet across the road over which his window looks. The other morning he was standing at this window waiting for his breakfast to arrive. It was a fine frosty day, made all the brighter by the sound of approaching bagpipes. Troops were about to march past, suggesting great national thoughts to Jones and reminding him of the familiar details of his own more active days. Jones prepared to enjoy himself.

Colonels on horses, thought Jones as he contemplated, are much of a muchness—always the look of the sahib about them, the slightly proud, the slightly stuffy, the slightly weather-beaten, the slightly affluent sahib. Company Commanders, also on horses, but somehow or other not quite so much on horses as the Colonels, are the same all the army through—very confident of themselves, but hoping against hope that there is nothing about their companies to catch the Adjutant's eye. The Subaltern walks as he has always done, lighthearted if purposeful, trusting that all is as it should be, but feeling that if it isn't that is some one else's trouble. Sergeants, Corporals, Lance-corporals and men have not altered. The Sergeants relax on the march into something almost bordering on friendliness towards their victims; the Corporals thank Heaven that for the moment they are but men; the Lance-corporals thank Heaven that always they are something more than men, and the men have the look of having decided that this is the last kilometre they'll ever footslog for anybody, but while they are doing it they might as well be cheerful about it. The regimental transport makes a change from the regularity of column of route, and the comic relief is provided, as it has always been and always will be provided whatever the disciplinary martinets may say or do, by the company cooks.

This was a sight, thought Jones, he could watch for ever. He was sorry when the battalion came at last to an end; he was glad when another almost immediately began. He was in luck; doubtless this was a brigade on the move. He proposed to have his breakfast at the window, when it came as come it soon must, thus refreshing his hungry body and his contemplative mind at the same time. The second battalion, as the first, were fine fellows all, suggesting the might of the Allies and the futility of the enemy's protracted resistance. Again the comic relief was provided by the travelling cuisine, reminding Jones of the oddity of human affairs and the need of his own meal, now sufficiently deferred.

The progress of the Brigade was interrupted by the intervention of a train of motor transport. Jones spent the time of its passing in consulting his watch, wondering where the devil was his breakfast and ascertaining that his servant had indeed gone across the road for it at least forty minutes ago.

It was not until there came a break, after the first company of the third battalion, that the reason of this delay became