erely
looks like a very beautiful florist's. There are potatoes in the
window, it is true, but they are "hot-house" ones; inside there is
no trace of a common vegetable. But if you ask facetiously for a
cauliflower (as I did) the young lady will disappear below ground and
actually return with a real cauliflower (_de luxe_, of course). I
remember few more embarrassing episodes.

And if you like to inquire at the magnificent provision-merchant's he
too will conjure up from the magic cellars boot-cream and metal-polish
and all those vulgar groceries which make life possible. That is the
secret of Bond Street. Beneath that glittering display of luxurious
trivialities there are vast reserves of solid prosaic necessaries,
only waiting to be asked for. A man could live exclusively on Bond
Street. I don't know where you would buy your butchers' meat, but I
have a proud fancy that, if you went in and said something to one of
those sleek and sorrowful jewellers, he too would vanish underground
and blandly return to you with a jewelled steak or a plush chop.

Many years ago, they tell me, there _was_ a butcher in Bond Street.
Perhaps you dealt there. For my part I was not eating much meat in
those days. But I can imagine his window--a perfect little grotto of
jasper and onyx, with stalactites of pure gold, and in the middle,
resting on a genuine block of Arctic ice, an exquisite beef-sausage. I
wish he would come back.

It is difficult to realise that there is anything but shop-windows in
Bond Street, but I like to think that, up there in those upper storeys
which one never sees, there does dwell a self-contained little
community to whom Bond Street is merely the village street, down which
the housewives pass gossiping each morning to the greengrocer's or the
fishmonger's and never purchase any pearls at all.

When the butcher comes back I think I shall join them.

A. P. H.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Father_. "LOOK HERE, BILLY, MR. SMITH CALLED AT THE
OFFICE THIS MORNING ABOUT YOUR FIGHT WITH HIS BOY YESTERDAY."

_Son_. "DID HE? I HOPE YOU GOT ON AS WELL AS I DID."]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Joan_ (_whose mother has just bought her a pair of
woollen gloves_). "OH, MUMMY, I WISH YOU HAD GOT KID. I HATE THIS
KIND; THEY MAKE MY SWEETS SO HAIRY."]

* * * * *

THE SAD CASE OF EL GRECO.

It was at the National Gallery, situ