was the reply. "I like sulphur tablets with
sardines. Wonder when they'll bring that beastly dry bread?"

"If there's a sulphur tablet left I could eat one myself," said
Lucille. "They are good for the inside and I have wept mine sore."

"Too late," answered Dam. "Pinch some more."

"They were the last," was the sad rejoinder. "They were for Rover's
coat, I think. Perhaps they will make your coat hairy, Dam. I mean
your skin."

"Whiskers to-morrow," said Dam.

After a pregnant silence the young lady announced:--

"Wish I could hug and kiss you, Darling. Don't you?... I'll write a
kiss on a piece of paper and push it under the door to you. Better
than spitting it through the key-hole."

"Put it on a piece of _ham_,--more sense," answered Dam.

The quarter-inch rasher that, later, made its difficult entry, pulled
fore and pushed aft, was probably the only one in the whole history of
Ham that was the medium of a kiss--located and indicated by means of a
copying-ink pencil and a little saliva.

Before being sent away to school at Wellingborough Dam had a very
curious illness, one which greatly puzzled Dr. Jones of Monksmead
village, annoyed Miss Smellie, offended Grumper, and worried Lucille.

Sitting in solitary grandeur at his lunch one Sabbath, sipping his old
Chambertin, Grumper was vexed and scandalized by a series of
blood-curdling shrieks from the floor above his breakfast-room.
Butterson, dispatched in haste to see "who the Devil was being killed
in that noisy fashion," returned to state deferentially as how Master
Damocles was in a sort of heppipletic fit, and foaming at the mouth.
They had found him in the General's study where he had been reading a
book, apparently; a big Natural History book.

A groom was galloping for Dr. Jones and Mrs. Pont was doin' her
possible.

No. Nothing appeared to have hurt or frightened the young
gentleman--but he was distinctly 'eard to shout: "_It is under my
foot. It is moving--moving--moving out_...." before he became
unconscious.

No, Sir. Absolutely nothing under the young gentleman's foot.

Dr. Jones could shed no light and General Sir Gerald Seymour Stukeley
hoped to God that the boy was not going to grow up a wretched
epileptic. Miss Smellie appeared to think the seizure a judgment upon
an impudent and deceitful boy who stole into his elders' rooms in
their absence and looked at their books.

Lucille was troubled in soul for, to her, Damocles confessed the