e.

* * * * *

Should the telephone-bell ring in your house, don't get excited. Keep calm.
Remember General GRANT. Remove the women and children to a place of safety,
lift off the receiver and say, "Good Heavens! Whoever can it be?"

* * * * *

Let us suppose that you are being attacked by a man with a chopper. Wait
until the weapon is well poised over your head. Just as he begins the down
stroke step aside smartly. The hatchet will then be found buried in the
ground. This means that bygones are bygones.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "ARE THEY RISING THE DAY, SIR?"

"NO."

"AH, WEEL, JUST BIDE A WEE. THEY AYE TAK BEST IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING."]

* * * * *

PETER AND JUDY.

Except for the fact that they had different sets of parents and were born
some hundred miles apart, Peter and Judy are practically twins.
Consequently, after an interval of three months, strenuous efforts were
made by the two young mothers to bring about a proper introduction between
the two wonders.

The occasion was to be one of great importance, for it was Judy's very
first tea-party, marking, as it were, the dawn of her social career. For
days the post-office wrestled with the correspondence necessary to bring
about the meeting. The mothers, both in person and by proxy, had scoured
the precincts of Kensington and Oxford Street respectively for the
necessary adornments to do their offspring justice, changing their minds so
often that the assistants came to take as much interest in the party as if
they were going to it themselves.

And yet, when the great moment arrived and the strong silent man was borne
into the room, round-eyed and expectant, he found his hostess already tired
out with her first tea-party and fast asleep. He could scarcely believe his
eyes; nor could Judy's scandalised father.

Peter was very good about it. He bore this chilly reception stoically,
deprecating any desire to wake the sleeping beauty--deprecating, in fact,
any interest in her or her cot whatsoever. Ignoring the efforts of the Big
People to fix his attention by pointing him directly at the main object of
the tea-party (they should have known that babies like looking the _other_
way always) he remained passively interested in a fascinating brass knob,
the while getting his gloves into a satisfactory state of succulence before
the