. For the last six months I have been
doing odd jobs at a munition factory, which, I must admit, has benefited my
health in an extraordinary manner, so much so that I have entirely lost the
troublesome dyspepsia I suffered from, and now, you will be glad to hear, I
am able to eat like a hunter, as we used to say. Hoping to find you all
flourishing on Thursday next, about lunch-time,

"Your affectionate
UNCLE TOM."

Instinctively I took my belt in a hole. Then Margery silently placed this
in front of me:--

"DARLING MARGERY,--How perfectly sweet of you! I shall simply love it. I am
feeling especially beany as I have just finished with the dentist--usually
a hateful person--who found out, after all, that it was not necessary to
take out any of my teeth. I adore him. No time for more. Heaps to tell you
on Friday,

"Your loving
J.J."

"Hullo! Where are you off to?" I asked, as Margery made for the door.

"Off to? Why, to put our names down on the Singleweeds' waiting list."

I took my belt up another hole and, whistling _The Bing Boys_ out of sheer
desperate bravado, made my gloomy way to the potato patch.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Plough Girl_. "MABEL, DO GO AND ASK THE FARMER IF WE CAN
HAVE A SMALLER HORSE. THIS ONE'S TOO TALL FOR THE SHAFTS."]

* * * * *

A MASTER OF THE QUILL.

"Of Swinburne's personal characteristics Mr. Goose, as was to be
expected, writes admirably."--_Daily News and Leader_.

* * * * *

GERMAN MEASLES.

"Francesca," I said, "you must admit that at last I have you at a
disadvantage."

"I admit nothing of the sort."

"Well," I said, "have you or have you not got German measles? It seems
almost an insult to put such a question to a woman of your energy and
brilliant intellectual capacity, but you force me to it."

"Dr. Manley--"

"Come, come, don't fob it off on the Doctor. He didn't wilfully provide you
with an absurd attack of this childish disease."

"No, he didn't; but when I was getting along quite nicely with the idea
that I was suffering from a passing headache he butted in and sent me to
bed as a German measler--and now we've all got it."

"Yes," I said, "you've all got it, all my little chickens and their
dam--you're the dam, remember that, Francesca--Muriel's got it, Nina's got
it, Alice has got it and Frederick has got it very slightly, but he insists
on having