y a
jocose and affable sergeant. "Brown eyes, I _think_," said the sergeant;
"height, five feet four inches; no beard _or_ moustache, ha-ha. Now sign
here and make a mark with your left thumb in this space. That'll pin you
down; no escape after that, ha-ha." He produced a board covered with
some black sticky substance, dabbed her thumb in it, dabbed it hard on
the paper, and, lo, Maria Hasewitz had been registered and had
undertaken not to move five miles from Totland Bay without a special
permit.

At present this particular alien enemy is engaged, together with all the
other available female members of the household, in making pyjamas for
our soldiers. Wonderful deeds are being done all round me with scissors
and needle and thread. A sewing-machine has been requisitioned.
Button-holes are being manufactured with immense expedition. A good deal
of "basting" is being got through. In my illimitable ignorance I had
hitherto imagined that basting was something that you did to a joint of
meat with a big ladle and some gravy. If you did it sufficiently the
joint came out succulent, if not it became dry and you abused the
butcher. However, we live and learn. Part, at any rate, of three suits
of pyjamas that are to go to the Red Cross to-day has been severely and
completely basted without either gravy or a ladle.

R. C. L.

* * * * *

Illustration: WELL MET!

GREAT BRITAIN JOINS HER ALLIES IN THE FIELD.

* * * * *

CHARIVARIA.

Even war has its humours. "In the midst of perfect peace the enemy
surprises us," is a sentence from a proclamation not by the King of the
BELGIANS but by the GERMAN KAISER.

***

WILHELM II. is said to be extremely annoyed in his capacity as a British
Admiral that he is not being kept fully informed as to the movements of
our Fleet.

***

The danger, of course, of a fondness for a place in the sun is that one
may get burnt.

***

The coming generation would certainly seem to be all right. Even
children are taking part in the fray. The Boy Scouts are helping
manfully here, and at Liege the Germans, we are told, used nippers for
cutting wire entanglements.

***

A vivid idea of the horrors of the return journey from the Continent to
England after the declaration of war may be gained from the fact that a
lady, in recounting her experiences in a contemporary, states that she
was thankful to