Various

“ John fell into silence again.
"What else did he say?" asked Mary, still with her eyes fastened on his face, as though she were looking at him for the last time.
"That was how he began. I can't tell you all he said afterwards, but I felt as if I'd just fight for him, even if there was nobody else in England ..."
"Aren't there lots of people who wouldn't mind going as much as you?" said Mary timidly. "I mean men with no wives or children. Oughtn't they to go first?" ”

“ Alone in a first-class compartment of the Scotch Express Ralph Wonderson, athlete and sportsman, journeyed northwards for the grouse hunting. He was surrounded by gun-cases and cartridge-belts, and, as the train flashed through the summer landscape, he reflected pleasantly that "Grey Bob," his magnificent hunter, was snugly ensconced in the horse-box adjoining. ”

“ Every Saturday morning a man comes to my bank to cash a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds. (How he gets through all that money in a week I have never had the courage to ask him.) Every Saturday morning I come to my bank to cash a cheque for—well, whatever it happens to be, you know.
The trouble is that we nearly always coincide; only the other man always seems to coincide first. ”

“ Evangeline, the optimist, was busy scratching up the more or less kindly fruits of the earth for her family and didn't make the slightest sign of recognition, though I coughed twice.
"She's much too busy," said Peggy, "to notice that you've come home. Aren't they darlings?"
"They're certainly a healthy-looking lot. Two of them I recognise as Clara's contribution. Doesn't she mind?"
"I don't think so," said Peggy; "she's busy too. She's been sitting now for nearly a fortnight, and Maud Eliza's on eggs as well."
"I hope none of my golf balls are addled," I said. ”

“ Sinclair tried to temporize.
"But wait a bit," he said. "Can't the servants manage to consume——"
"The servants breakfast long before you are up, Mr. Sinclair," my wife reminded him.
"It's perfectly simple," said I, suddenly taking the floor; "I think it an admirable idea, the essence of good citizenship. What we have got to do is to declare our appetites overnight so that every man eats the food he has booked and we make a clean sweep. Book me for two eggs and a kipper."
"Sorry there are no kippers to-morrow," said my wife. "Boiled eggs, bacon and kidneys and mushrooms." ”

“ Jane looked forward feverishly to the payment of the second instalment.
"You'll have to put it by," I said. "You have plenty of paper and things left, haven't you?"
"Yes, but I want a dormouse."
"Oh, but that wouldn't be legal," I said. "That would be a misappropriation of trust funds."
"What's that?" said Jane.
"Well," I said, "don't you see that the money's given to endow your camera, and must be spent on that camera and nothing else?"
"But there's nothing more to get for it," urged Jane.
"Then the money must accumulate interest until there is," I said. ”

“ THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT ENDOWMENT SCHEME.
Jane's uncle—Jane is my daughter—came to me one day and said, "What do you think of my giving Jane a camera for her birthday? Wouldn't she be pleased? The advertisement says, 'Any babe can do it,' and she'll be ten."
"I have no doubt she'd be delighted," I said, "but there's a but. If you give it you must endow it."
"What do you mean?" said Jane's uncle.
"The camera's the least part of it," I replied. "For half-a-guinea you can cast a camera upon the world, but have you given a moment's consideration to that camera's means of support? ”

“ You will walk steadily backwards for two miles. If you refuse I shall shoot Lady Margaret. And I shall shoot to kill."
His nerves as steady as steel in this desperate crisis, Ralph swiftly analysed the situation. If he backed away as commanded, Sir Ernest would then mount Grey Bob and ride off with Lady Margaret, and Ralph realised that even her death was preferable to this. If he made a dash at the assailant, the latter, to save his own skin, would almost certainly fire. ”

“ Tuesday.—Six Belgian mayors and five hundred selected Belgian villagers have been shot by my gallant troops. One of them had sneered at Lieutenant von Blutgierig as he sat at breakfast. The Belgians are indeed a stiff-necked race, but with God's help they shall be made to understand the sympathetic gentleness of the German character. But to sneer at a man in uniform is an inconceivable crime worthy only of an Englishman. The lieutenant has had to go into hospital to recover from this shameful treatment. He is a true German and shall be rewarded. ”

“ I began to wish that the cigarette-cases had perished, but after his kindness to Jane I could hardly refuse.
"Well, what would it cost?" I said.
"That's easily reckoned," said Jane's uncle. "Say I smoke on an average fifteen cigarettes a day—that's 105 a week—that's—— Have you a piece of paper?"
It worked out at just under 5,500 cigarettes a year. At 8s. a hundred, twenty guineas would just cover the year's endowment. It seemed out of all proportion to the cost of the case.
"It's a good deal more than Jane's camera got," I protested. ”

“ German Kaiser. "Let us prey."
"Come on," said I. "You fellows are simply trying to shirk the thing. I declare two eggs, no bacon and three mushrooms, assuming an average size for mushrooms. One cup and a half of coffee. Three lumps in all."
"Well, that's a fairly good lead," said Sinclair. "I propose to double you on mushrooms and I should like to be put down for a kidney. What about you, Henry?"
"Nothing but one rasher of bacon, please," said Henry meekly. "I am never hungry in the morning and I have always wanted to know how much bacon there is in a rasher. ”

“ Women have no heads for the law. I could not make Jane see that to buy a dormouse with the funds of the camera would be an irregular and punishable proceeding. Finally, in despair, I had to promise to ask her uncle if he would recognise the application of one quarter's payment to the purchase of a dormouse. ”

“ Most of us have the treasure-trove instinct sufficiently developed to like reading about a young man who picks up Gainsboroughs for a tenner, or unearths lost masterpieces of Turner on a clue supplied by an old letter. ”

“ The Deutsche Tageszeitung says:—"Our present war with England shall not be done by halves; it is no war to be stopped by 'notice,' but by a proper settlement. Otherwise the peace we all desire would be both rotten and dangerous." ”

“ As Premier reminded House this afternoon, three weeks ago he declared desire that no party in any quarter of the House should gain advantage or should suffer prejudice from the temporary suspension of domestic controversy. When this was resumed, matters should be taken up and proceeded with exactly at the point and under the conditions at which they were left. The main feature of such conditions was the avowed intention of the Government to place the two Bills on Statute Book, hope being cherished of arrival at friendly settlement by means of Amending Bill. ”

“ All Belgian and French universities are to be at once bombarded and burnt for failing to recognise superiority of German intellect. Have just read noble book by Professor Lumpenthor, who proves that Cæsar, Hannibal, Alexander, Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Napoleon, Attila and Genghis Khan were all Germans. He seems to fear that we modern Germans are too merciful. ”

“ I said.
"Well, isn't a cigarette-case as eligible [Pg 227] as a camera?" he said. "Its needs are, I consider, even greater. Presumably this gift is meant to facilitate my smoking, but an empty cigarette-case offers me nothing to smoke—it implies the heavy responsibility on an already overburdened man of keeping it filled. Now, suppose you complete the gift, as I did Jane's, by at least a year's endowment?" ”

“ I asked, "are the figures relating to this lot of Evangeline's?"
"Here," she said, "under 'E'. Five chickens. I've allowed five to die, though I'm sure they wouldn't if they knew what they're wanted for."
"I'm afraid you'll have to work it all out again."
"Why?"
"Look here," I said, "five chickens, and each going to lay at least enough eggs to sit on, and half of the sitting to mature, as it were; that sounds fair enough, but not more than three of this lot will lay eggs at all."
"Oh! why ever not?" she said.
"Nature's limitations," I explained. "Seven of them are cockerels." ”

“ H. H. Davies to regard seriously the love of a man for a maid. North of the river and west of Temple Bar it is the intrigues of the highly compromised middle-aged which are supposed to be most worthy of attention on the stage. But Mr. Davies (luckily) is never afraid of being young. So he starts us off with a picture of Geoffrey in the clutches of drink and drugs just because Valentine has jilted him. True that when Valentine is finally married to another man Geoffrey is still in love with her, and receives her at midnight in his rooms ”

“ I only know one man in the regiment that Phyllis's brother adorns, and his name is Captain Nares. Even supposing that the name had been censored in Leo's letter, there could be no doubt as to the identity of the person to whom the writer referred.
So far as I could see there was one of two possibilities. Either Phyllis was involuntarily developing the Censor habit, or she was treating the exigencies of correspondence in war-time with a levity that in a future wife I firmly deprecated. Humour of this kind is all very well in its place ”

“ Henry was down early and bagged all my toast, while Sinclair, who had slept badly, refused to meet his obligations in the matter of kedjeree.
By the third day there was a good deal of unseemly barter and exchange going on, and Sinclair made a corner in eggs. "The trouble is," he explained, "that you never really know how good a thing is till you see it. Overnight a sardine on toast means nothing to me; and it was never announced that these eggs were going to be poached." ”

“ It was a merry party which set out next morning, and, as each cavalier passed Lady Margaret, who stood on the terrace, he playfully pledged himself to do his knightliest.
Soon they parted, each taking his own route. Ralph, urging Grey Bob to his best paces, plunged straight into the heart of the forest, his loader running sturdily at his stirrup. A curious, taciturn fellow, this loader, with a tangled mass of flaming red hair and a bushy red beard which almost obscured his features and hung below his sporran.
THROUGH GERMAN SPECTACLES.
Germany. ”

“ But you haven't allowed for the chickens we shall eat."
"No," she said, "but we shall save 2s. on each one we eat, so it's the same thing in the end."
I admitted the plausibility of this calculation.
"But," I said, "you're not allowing for deaths and bad eggs."
"Oh yes, I am," she said; "I've only allowed half the eggs to become chickens."
"You'd never make a company promoter," I said.
"I'm going to be a hospital nurse, thank you, Daddy," she said with her nose in the air. "Do come and see Evangeline's family." ”

“ I replied by return of post that she was really trying to ruin a neutral Denmark, and that to compete with the hated foe she must induce Evangeline, Clara & Co. to turn their attention to laying sausages, the brass collars of electric-light bulbs, toys and small hardware; but, so as not to discourage her, I added that the chickens would make splendid table-decorations later on, and would keep down Williamson's absurd bills for meat. ”

“ She informed her father that she intended to collar some of the alien trade, and had made a good start with her ten chickens, in addition to the three Minorcas, five Cochins, and two Pedigree-unknowns, which were all laying eggs like anything. Another of the Cochins, Maud Eliza, was beginning to get broody, and was being trained for her sitting Marathon on a box of my best golf-balls, and altogether things looked rosy—from Peggy's point of view. ”

“ Every opportunity of proving our enlightenment should have been taken. There will be trouble over this, I can promise you. Leave me now. I must think."
He turned again to the blood-and-iron tonic, and was once more at the mirror when I left. His moustaches had come undone again. Both ends now pointed resolutely to the carpet.
THE COUNTING OF CHICKENS.
FOR business reasons I had to take my holiday alone this year, after my wife and children had come back from Cornwall.
While I was away Peggy wrote to me and said that Evangeline, her favourite Minorca, had laid eleven eggs. ”