m. For by this time,
what with Herbert's subaltern, Carey's pawn, and a cistern left me by an
uncle who was dining with us that night, I had more than enough to
distract me.

And so the business has gone on. The news that I am preparing a
collection of interesting and tricky problems for a new "Encyclopaedia"
has got about among my friends. Everybody who writes to me tells me of a
relation of his who has been shearing sheep or rowing against the stream
or dealing himself four aces. People who come to tea borrow a box of
wooden matches and beg me to remove one match and leave a perfect square.
I am asked to do absurd things with pennies....

Meanwhile Herbert has forgotten both the problem and the girl. Three
evenings later he shared his Hollandaise sauce with somebody in yellow
(as luck would have it) and she changed the subject by wondering if he
read Dickens. He is now going manfully through "Bleak House"--a chapter
a night--and when he came to visit me to-day he asked me if I had ever
heard of the man.

However, I was not angry with him, for I had just made it come to "three
cows." It is a cow short, but it is nearer than I have ever been before,
and I think I shall leave it at that. Indeed, both the doctor and the
nurse say that I had better leave it at that.

TO THE DEATH

_(In the Twentieth Century manner_)

"Cauliflower!" shrieked Gaspard Volauvent across the little table in the
_estaminet_. His face bristled with rage.

"Serpent!" replied Jacques Rissole, bristling with equal dexterity.

The two stout little men glared ferociously at each other. Then Jacques
picked up his glass and poured the wine of the country over his friend's
head.

"Drown, serpent!" he said magnificently. He beckoned to the waiter.
"Another bottle," he said. "My friend has drunk all this."

Gaspard removed the wine from his whiskers with the local paper and leant
over the table towards Jacques.

"This must be wiped out in blood," he said slowly. "You understand?"

"Perfectly," replied the other. "The only question is whose."

"Name your weapons," said Gaspard Volauvent grandly.

"Aeroplanes," replied Jacques Rissole after a moment's thought.

"Bah! I cannot fly."

"Then I win," said Jacques simply.

The other looked at him in astonishment.

"What! You fly?"

"No; but I can learn."

"Then I will learn too," said Gaspard with dignity. "We meet--in six
months?"

"Good." Jacques pointed to the ceiling. "Say thr