ushion.
It looked unusually crowded even for a pin-cushion, and I got out of bed
to investigate the matter closer. I counted forty-five--yes,
forty-five--little flags, and then memory came back to me. The previous
day I had bought forty-five miniature Belgian flags at one time and
another during the day. Each charming but inexperienced vendor had
insisted on pinning my purchase wherever there happened to be an
unoccupied space on my manly (thanks to my tailor) bosom. I remembered
being conscious of a prickly sensation on each occasion, but I
attributed it to rapturous thrills running about the region of my heart.

To make sure that my explanation was correct I went once again to the
mirror and hastily counted my rash. There were forty-five of it!

* * * * *

"HUGE GERMAN SURRENDERS."

_"Evening Standard" Poster._

Probably he had eaten too many sausages.

* * * * *

Illustration: Flag-bearer. "FEEL COLD, AN' WANT YER SHIRT, DO YER?
GARN! WHERE'S YER PATRIOTISM?"

* * * * *

LOVE'S LABOUR NOT LOST.

I wish you knew my sister-in-law; she is probably one of the sweetest
girls that ever breathed. Yet we are none of us perfect, and Grace has a
drawback. She cannot forget that I am a poet. A fortnight ago she wrote
to me:--

"Dear Edwin,--I am in such a fix. You remember Mary Smith? She has
persuaded a young doctor friend of hers to start an album for original
poems. He is such a nice fellow, though perhaps not very fond of poetry,
if left to himself. But he has bought the album and has asked her to
write on the first page. So she has come to me about it; and I am
writing to ask if you would be a great brick and help us, because we get
mixed up so with the feet, and I know it is nothing to you to write
poetry. Could you possibly let me have it by return?

Yours affectionately,

Grace.

P.S.--_Entre nous_, she is rather keen on him, I think."

Somehow, when Grace's note reached me at the Local Government Board (she
has a habit of addressing her communications to me there, in faintly
perfumed envelopes much appreciated by the messengers), I was not in a
poetical mood. For the past three weeks my branch had been engaged on
the subject of Drains in the Eastern Counties, and that very morning I
was completing an exhaustive minute dealing with the probable effects of
an improved system of sanitation on the pu