nment. Besides, you could easily have got through without a
ticket."

"How?"

"By taking out your note-case at the barrier and showing the girl the
back of a Bradbury. Dazzled by the display of so much wealth, she'd
pass you without a murmur."

"A miserable subterfuge," Cozens protested.

"Or you and I might walk up to the barrier deep in conversation. I
should then get in front, and the examiner would pull me up for my
ticket. I should fumble before producing my season. Meantime you would
have passed beyond recall."

"I simply couldn't do it."

"Or why not pay at the barrier, if you _must_ pay?"

"Yes, and lose the return ticket rate. How should I get down
to-night?"

"That's easy. Buy a platform ticket. The man at the gate at home will
pass you; he knows you."

"All underhand work," said Cozens. "It's much more dignified to buy a
ticket."

Just then a travelling inspector entered our carriage.

"Tickets, gentlemen, please!"

And Cozens, looking supremely undignified, produced a third-class
return, and tried to explain.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Little Girl_ (_reading poster_). "OH, MUMMY, ISN'T
THAT VULGAR? OUGHTN'T THEY TO PUT 'PERSPIRED LABOUR'?"]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_BY MR. PUNCH'S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS_.)

MR. COMPTON MACKENZIE gives us in _Sylvia and Michael_ (SECKER) a
continuation--I hesitate to say a conclusion--of the adventures of
that amazing heroine, _Sylvia Scarlett_, which, being not a sequel but
a second volume, needs some familiarity with the first for its full
enjoyment. Not that anyone even meeting _Sylvia_ for the first time
in mid-course could fail to be intrigued by the astounding things that
are continually happening to her. The variety and piquancy of these
events and the general brilliance of Mr. MACKENZIE'S colouring must
keep the reader alert, curious, scandalized (perhaps), but always
expectant. His scheme starts with an invigorating plunge (as one might
say, off the deep end) into the cabaret society of Petrograd in 1914,
where _Sylvia_ and the more than queer company at the pension of _Mere
Gontran_ are surprised by the outbreak of war. Incidentally, _Mere
Gontran_ herself, with her cats, whose tails wave in the gloom "like
seaweed," and her tawdry spiritualism--"key-hole peeping at infinity"
the heroine (or the author) rather happily calls it--is one of the
least forgettable figures i