eference is to DRINK;
Here, where as yet no rules apply
By Pussyfeet dictated,
The merit's mine whenever I
Am not inebriated.

O. S.

* * * * *

THE PERSONAL ELEMENT AT A MOTOR SHOW.

Not to be outdone by Olympia we have just held a motor show in our
provincial Town Hall. What though the motoring magazines, obese with the
rich diet of advertisement, grew no fatter in its honour, it was at least
the most successful social function we have known since the War began. The
Town Hall externally was magnificent with flags by day and coloured lamps
by night, and within was a blaze of bunting and greenstuff. The band of the
Free Shepherds played popular music, and the luncheon and tea rooms were
the scene of most delightful little gatherings. Besides all this, quite a
number of cars were to be found amongst the decorations.

Nearly every demobilised officer in the county seems to have taken up an
agency for a car or two, and bought himself spats on the strength of a
prospective fortune. Jimmy Wrigley and I are amongst them. Wrigley in the
Great War was M.T., R.A.S.C., and knows so much about cars that he can tell
the make of lamps from the track of the tyres; while I was a cavalryman and
know so little that I judge Jimmy's cleverness only by other people's
incredulity. On our stand at the show we exhibited two cars, which, as I
carefully learned beforehand from the book of the words, were a Byng-Beatty
and a Tanglefoot, these being the cars for which we are what they call
concessionaires. (The _bat_ is tricky, but one picks it up loafing about
garages.)

As a rule Jimmy and I do the correspondence between us--Jimmy contributing
the technique and I the punctuation; but for the three days of the show his
cousin Sheila volunteered to preside at a dainty little table and make
jottings of our orders. Sheila is always ornamental, and as we had the
stand draped to tone with her hair, and she wore a dress which harmonized
like soft music with the pale heliotrope of the Tanglefoot's body-work, our
display was a magnet from the word "Go."

And then on the morning of the opening day Jimmy went down with his Lake
Doiran malaria and left me to it!

I am as brave as most people, but this calamity unmanned me. "Sheila," I
said to a pair of pitying grey eyes, as the crowd, having heard the show
declared open, massed about our stand--"Sheila, the situation is desperate.
These people will ask