Rhine. On his demobilisation I will place the matter before him if you
will leave the bill in my hands." I left it.

I skipped a gramophone emporium and a baby-linen shop and entered a
fishmonger's. Here I adopted tactics of absolute candour. "Look here,"
I said, "I haven't come to buy anything. I don't want any fish, flesh
or red-herring, but I should be no end grateful if you would stick
this bill up for me somewhere."

"Certainly, Sir, as many as you like," said the proprietor heartily.

Gleefully I gave him two. One he stuck on a hook on top of a couple of
ducks, and it flopped over face downwards on their breasts. The other
he laid in the middle of the marble counter, and the next moment his
assistant came along and slapped an outsize halibut on it.

I went into a jeweller's next and purchased a gold curb bangle (with
padlock attached).

"You clever old thing," said Maisie; "you'd never tell one from the
other, would you? Mine's a tiny bit heavier, don't you think? I've
just found it in the soap-dish. I'll change this for a filigree
pendant. All my life I've longed for a filigree pendant"

* * * * *

"For 85 tons of blackberries, gathered last autumn,
Northamptonshire elementary school children were paid
L2,380, 3d. a lb."--_Daily Paper_.

The young profiteers!

* * * * *

"Splendid imitation almond paste for cakes can be made
as follows: Take four ounces of breadcrumbs, one small
teaspoonful of almond essence, four ounces of soft
white sugar, and one well-eaten egg to bind the
mixture."--_Answers_.

The difficulty is to get the egg.

* * * * *

_APRES LA GUERRE_.

"_On ne sait jamais le dessous des cartes_," as the perplexing dialect
of the aborigines of this country would put it. William and I, when
we used to discuss after-the-war prospects o' nights in the old
days, were more or less resigned to a buckshee year or two of filling
shell-holes up and pulling barbed wire down. Instead of which we all
go about the country taking in each others' education. No one, we
gather, will be allowed to go home until he has taken his B.A. with
honours. And after that--But it would be better to begin at the
beginning.

It began within ten days of the signing of the armistice, assuming
the shape of an official inquiry from Division, a five-barred document
wherein somebody with a talen