WITH HONOUR.

This is the story of Mr. Holmes, the Curate, and of how he brought peace to our troubled house. The principal characters are John, my brother-in-law, and Margery, my unmarried sister, and, at the bottom of the programme, in large letters, Mr. Holmes, the Curate. I have a small walking-on part. The story will now commence.

John and Margery went out for a walk in the beautiful Spring sunshine as friendly as friendly. They came back three hours later—well, Cecilia (his wife) and I heard them at least two villages away.

They both rushed into the room covered with mud and shouting at the tops of their voices.

"Cecilia," roared John, "order this girl out of my house. She shan't stay under my roof another hour."

"Cecilia," shrieked Margery, "he's an obstinate ignorant wretch, and thank Heaven he isn't my husband."

I put a cushion over my head.

Cecilia kept hers.

"If you will both go out of the room," she said, "take off your filthy boots and come back in your right minds and decent clothing I'll try to understand what you are both talking about."

They crawled out of the room abjectly and I came out into the open once more.

"Good Lord! What a family to be in!" I said.

"Cecilia," said John at tea, "harking back to the question of Hairy Bittercress——"

"Hazel Catkin," said Margery.

"What on earth——?" began Cecilia.

"I'll tell her," said Margery quickly. "Cecilia, we had a competition this afternoon, seeing who could find most signs of Spring. Well, I found a bit of Hazel Catkin——"

"Hairy Bittercress," said John.

"I tell you——" went on Margery.

"If you will calm yourself," interrupted John with dignity, "we will discuss the point."

"There's nothing to discuss. What do you know about botany, I'd like to know?"

"My dear child," said John, "when you were an infant-in-arms, nay, before you existed at all, it was my custom to ramble o'er the dewy meads, plucking the nimble Nipplewort and the shy Speedwell. I breakfasted on botany."

"Talking of botany," I broke in "there was a chap in my platoon——"

John groaned loudly.

"Do you suggest," I asked, "that he was not in my platoon?"

"I suggest nothing," he answered; "I only know that they can't all have been in your platoon."

"All who, John?" asked Cecilia.

"All the chaps he tells us about. Haven't you noticed, since he came home, it's impossible to mention any type or freak or extraordinary individual that wasn't like somebody in his platoon? It must have been about five thousand per cent. over strength."

"I treat your insults with contempt," I said, "and proceed with my story. This chap had the same affliction that has taken Margery and yourself. He spent his life searching for specimens of the Bingle-weed and the five-leaved Funglebid. At bayonet-drill he would stop in the middle of a 'long-point, short-point, jab' to pluck a sudden Oojah-berry that caught his eye. In the end his passion got him to Blighty."

"How?" asked Margery.

"Well," I continued, "it was the morning of the great German attack. My friend—er—I will call him X—and myself were retiring on the village of—er—Y, followed by about six million Germans. Shots were falling all round us, when suddenly X saw a small wild flower at his feet. He bent down to pick it up and—er——"

"That is quite enough, Alan," said Cecilia.

"That is all, Cecilia," I said; "that is how he got to Blighty."

"We will now proceed with the subject in hand," said John after a moment's silence. He produced a small crushed piece of green-stuff from his pocket.

"The question before the house is, as we used to say in the Great War, 'Qu'est-ce-que c'est que ceci?' Any suggestions that it is of the Lemon species will be returned unanswered. For my part I say it is Hairy Bittercress."

"And I say it's Hazel Catkin," said Margery.

"And what says Hubert the