moment of the Dying Swan's collapse.]

Host (to friend who feels faint.) "Now, what you want is a good stiff glass of"—(suddenly remembering the Budget)—"soda!"

THE TAKING OF TIMOTHY.

Tea was over, a clearing was made of the articles of more fragile virtue, and Timothy, entering in state, was off-loaded from his nurse's arms into his mother's.

"Isn't he looking sweet to-day?" said Suzanne. "It's really time we had him photographed."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, why do people as a rule get photographed?"

"That," I said, "is a question I have often asked myself, but without finding a satisfactory answer. What do you propose to do with the copies?"

"There are dozens of people who'll be only too glad to have them. Aunt Caroline, for instance——"

"Aunt Caroline one day took me into her confidence and showed me what she called her scrap-heap. It was a big box full of photographs that had been presented to her from time to time, and she calculated that if she had had them all framed, as their donors had doubtless expected, it would have cost her some hundreds of pounds. While her back was turned I looked through the collection. Your photograph was there—and mine, Suzanne."

"Anyhow, we shall want one to keep ourselves. Think what a pleasure it will be to him when he grows up to see what he looked like as a tiny baby."

I called to mind an ancestral album belonging to my own family that I had carefully kept guarded from Suzanne precisely for the reason that it contained various presentments of myself at early ages in mirth-compelling garments and attitudes; but of course I could not now urge that chamber of horrors in opposition to her demand.

"Besides," she went on, "we needn't buy any copies at all if we don't like them. Snapper and Klick are continually worrying me to have Baby taken. Once a week regularly, ever since the announcement of his birth appeared, they've rung me up to ask when he will give them a sitting. Sometimes it's Snapper and sometimes it's Klick; I don't know which is which, but one of them has adenoids. We can't do any harm by taking him there, because they say in their circulars they present two copies free and there's no obligation to purchase any."

"I wonder how they make that pay?"

"Oh," said Suzanne, "they keep the copyright, you know, and then when he does anything famous they send it round to the illustrated papers, which pay them no end of money for permission to reproduce it."

"But by the time he does anything famous," I objected, "won't this photograph be a trifle out of date? Supposing, for instance, in twenty or thirty years' time he marries a Movie Queen——"

Just then the telephone-bell rang, and Suzanne, as is her wont, rushed to answer it, dropping Timothy into my arms on the way.

"Hello!" I heard her say. "Yes; speaking. Yes, I was just going to write. Yes; that will do quite well. What? Yes, about eleven. Good-bye."

"Not another appointment with the dressmaker?" I inquired.

"No. Curiously enough it was Klick again—or Snapper—and his adenoids are worse than ever; I suppose it's the damp weather gets into them. So I said we'd take Baby to-morrow."

"I don't quite see the connection," I said. "Besides, aren't they catching?"

"Now you're being funny again. Save that up for to-morrow."

"What do you mean?" I asked in some alarm. "And why did you say we'd take Baby?"

"Why, of course you've got to come too. You can always make him laugh better than anyone else; it's your métier. And I do want his delicious little dimples to come out."

"Do I understand that I'm to go through my répertoire in cold blood and under the unsympathetic gaze of Messrs. Snapper and Klick? Suzanne, it can't be done."

"Oh, nonsense! You've only got to sing Pop Goes the Weasel in a falsetto voice and make one of those comic faces you do so well, and he'll gurgle at once. Well, that's settled. We start at half-past ten to-morrow."

The coming ordeal so preyed upon my mind that I spent a most restless night, during which, so Suzanne afterwards told me, I announced at frequent intervals the popping of the weasel. The day dawned with a steady drizzle of rain, and, after a poor attempt at breakfast, I scoured the neighbourhood for a taxi. Having at last run one to earth, I packed the expedition into it—Suzanne, Timothy, Timothy's nurse and Barbara (who begged so hard to be allowed to "come and see Father make faces at Baby" that Suzanne weakly consented).

Arrived at our destination, Suzanne bade the driver wait. "We shall never find another cab to take us home in this downpour," she said, "and we shan't be kept long."

We were ushered into the studio by a gentleman I now know to have been Mr. Klick. He aroused my distrust at once by the fact that he did not wear a velvet coat, and I pointed out this artistic deficiency in a whisper to Suzanne.

"Never mind," she whispered back; "we needn't buy any if they're not good."

Timothy, who had by now been put straight by his attendant, was carefully placed on all-fours on a pile of cushions, which he promptly proceeded to chew. Mr. Klick, on attempting to correct the pose, was received with a hymn of hate that compelled him to bury his head hastily in the camera-cloth, and Suzanne arranged the subject so that some of his more recognisable features became visible.

"Now then," she said to me, "make him smile."

With a furtive glance at Mr. Klick, who fortunately was still playing the ostrich, I essayed a well-tried "face" that had almost invariably evoked a chuckle from Timothy, even when visitors were present. On this occasion, however, it failed to produce anything more than a woebegone pucker that foreshadowed something worse. Hastily I switched off into another expression, but with no better result.

"Go on, Father," encouraged Barbara, who had been taking a breathless interest in these proceedings; "try your funny voice."

Mr. Klick had emerged from cover and was standing expectantly with his hand on the cap.

Dear reader, have you ever been called upon to sing Pop Goes the Weasel in a falsetto voice before a fractious baby, a small but intensely critical child, a stolidly contemptuous nurse, an agitated mother and a gaping photographer, with the knowledge that success or failure hangs upon your lips, and that all the time a diabolical machine in the street below is scoring threepence against you every minute or so? Of course you haven't; but possibly you may be able to enter into my feelings in this hour of trial. With a prickly heat suffusing my whole body and a melting sensation at the collar I struggled through the wretched lyric once. Timothy regarded me first with scorn and then with positive distaste. In desperation I squeaked it out again and yet again, but each succeeding "pop" only registered another scowl on the face of my offspring and another threepence on that of the cabman's clock.

I was maddened now, and Suzanne sought to restrain me; but I shook her off violently and went on again da capo, and was just giving vent for about the seventeenth time to a particularly excruciating "pop" when the door of the studio opened and a benevolent-looking old gentleman entered. He gazed at us all in wonderment, and, overcome by mingled shame and exhaustion, I sank into a chair and popped no more.

"Ah, Mr. Snapper," said Mr. Klick, "we were just trying to get this