see_. But why?"

"Because then he can earn enough money to keep us all comfortably--us in
idle dependence at Chelsea, him in idle independence at Merthyr-Tydfil or
wherever one mines."

"He might send us diamonds now and then too. Or perhaps it isn't allowed."

"No, no. He'll be a coal-miner, naturally."

Margaret pondered this for some minutes.

"No, I don't think much of your idea," she said finally. "Very likely coal
will have gone out of fashion by then and we shall all be warming ourselves
with Cape gooseberries or pine-kernels or something. I think he ought to be
taught _all_ kinds of mining--diamond-mining, salt-mining, gold-mining and
undermining at Lloyd's. Then be could take up whatever was most profitable
at the moment."

"He has a busy youth ahead of him, I see. Have you thought of anything
else?"

"Not at present. Don't you think, though, that this little talk of ours has
been rather instructive, Gerald? Shall we open a correspondence in _The
Literary Supplement_ on 'The Boy: What Will He Become'?"

"Not quite the sort of thing for their readers, I should say."

"But surely some of them must be quite human. It isn't as if I'd said
_Notes and Queries_. One can't imagine the readers of that ever--"

"Listen!" said Gerald. "I think I hear--"

But Margaret had vanished. Nat's already pessimistic views on his future
were being published for the benefit of the Man in the Street.

PART II.--THE DISPOSAL, 1945.

The President and Committee of the British Lepidopterists' Association
request the pleasure of your company on January the 15th, at 5 P.M., when
Mr. Nathaniel Prendergast will give an illustrated address on The Haunts
and Habits of the minor Copperwing, together with a few Notes on Gnats.

* * * * *

"Linen collars at 3s. 6d. each sounds incredible."--_Daily News._

A bit stiff, no doubt.

* * * * *

[Illustration: A DOWNING STREET MELODRAMA.

THE PREMIER. "COME ON IN, BONAR; I LOVE THESE FANCY BLOOD-CURDLERS. BEST
TONIC IN THE WORLD."]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Disgusted Parent._ "NAH THEN, 'ORACE, SET ABAHT 'IM! ANYONE
CAN SEE THE 'ORSE 'AS LOST ALL RESPECT FOR YER."]

* * * * *

SPORTING GOLF.

(_With the British Army in France._)

"I noticed the old sapper instinct asserting itself in Mac when he tried to
tunnel out of that bunker at the seventh