Various

“ I began to think about making another mistake and getting a second hut, but that evening Chaucer came sliding down over the steep turf, visibly annoyed.
"Where did you get this hut?"
"Found it."
"On Ripilly wharf?"
"Certainly not. I found it down there by the road and had it brought up here for safety. If a lorry had run over it in the dark—"
"Ah, cut it out," he said. "The hut is mine. I found two odd sections in the last barge-load. Any poacher who knew his job would burn the feathers when he cooked the bird. You needn't start to explain about your fool N.C.O., who made a mistake. ”

“ Nothing could be more attractive than the central idea of The Love Spinner (METHUEN) , which is to tell the war-time adventures of a little old lady—the good fairy of her circle—whose interest in the heart-affairs of her friends wins her this pleasant if slightly sentimental title. But, ungrateful as is the task of breaking so innocent a butterfly upon the wheel of criticism, I'm afraid I must add that I think Miss CLARA TURNBULL has hardly carried out her purpose with sufficient discrimination. In plain fact she has allowed her sympathies to run away with her. ”

“ I replied; "but what about it?"
"Does it not occur to you," he continued, "that it is a very remarkable thing that that beetle should have already travelled six feet across the most crowded promenade in Buda-Pesth without having been trodden on?"
Being used to Frederick I do not take him too seriously and made no reply, intending to brush the incident aside, but I found my gaze continually returning to Coleopteron, conscious of that peculiar fascination which attracts one to impending tragedy. ”

“ The hut must be put out of bounds. And when he found half the men had gone under the tarpaulin shelter he put that out of bounds too.
We were a full hour trying to separate the contacts; but when the doctor found the cook getting breakfast ready and heard he had been in the sick man's hut he threw his hand in.
"I won't answer for a single one of you," he said; "the place is no better than a pest-house. Throw that breakfast away. It's sheer poison. Clear out, all of you."
It was Chaucer started the panic. ”

“ My aunt insisted that we must keep chickens, and you know my aunt.
Pardon! You don't know my aunt. She is an elderly maiden lady who "keeps house" for me. She is eminently practical—theoretically speaking.
She insisted. "With eggs at eightpence it's a sin and a shame not to keep hens in war-time."
I urged that the food would cost a good many eightpences—in war-time.
Her reply was "Pshaw!" (She really does say "Pshaw"—and means it.) "Pshaw! they will live on kitchen scraps."
We consulted Nibletts. He has a local reputation as a chicken expert, mainly, I believe, because he's a butcher. ”

“ I apologised for the delay.
"There is no hurry," he replied. "Accounts can wait; But I hope," he added, taking an envelope from a drawer, "that this letter for you is equally unimportant. It came, I'm afraid, four days ago, and I was always meaning to bring it in, but forgot."
Unimportant! It was merely an invitation from the most adorable woman in London to share her box at the Russian Ballet on the previous night, to see what she knew was my most desired performance, Carnaval, Les Sylphides and Pelroushka. ”

“ Now I have a French friend, Henri, one of those annoying Frenchmen who talks English much better than I do, and Henri, for some extraordinary reason, had seen my review. He has to live in London now, but his heart is in Paris; and I imagine that every word of his beloved language which appears, however casually, in an English paper mysteriously catches his eye and brings the scent and sounds of the boulevards to him across the coffee-cups. So the next time I met him he shook me warmly by the hand, and told me how glad he was that I was an admirer of ANTOINE VAURELLE'S novels.
"Who isn't?" ”

“ Nibletts then recommended (if he might so describe it) a "tit-up." That was, so to speak, a conjuring-trick of a laying-box, which let the egg fall through a trap-door into a padded cell beneath. My aunt thought it unnatural and feared that it might be exhausting. Nevertheless we tried it, and extracted one solitary egg from the basement.
Then, being an engineer by profession, I conceived a mechanical means of giving those hens the scare of their lives if they persisted in their antisocial habits. ”

“ In the end an air-raid, of which the details are surely unusual, provides Miss Jessie with the opportunity for a deed of heroism that I am still trying to visualize (her nephew had thrown her down and was protecting her body with his own; but the heroine, seeing this, changed places with her defender "between the flash of the shell's impact and the explosion") and finishes, with an appropriately tearful death-scene, a tale that would have been improved by more restraint in the telling. ”

“ I am myself no fastidious precisian, being in a Labour Company, but there are limits—or should be. My own particular grouch against them started at Ripilly-sur-Somme. They, being skilled Royal Engineers, were clearing undergrowth and putting up huts in Ripilly woods for a division due to arrive, and my scorned rabble were unloading the huts in sections from barges at Ripilly canal wharf and loading them on to lorries for transport to the woods. ”

“ Nibletts suggested our getting a patent laying-box, furnished with (what he apologised to my aunt for calling) a false front. My aunt did not at first grasp the idea, but what Nibletts did in fact refer to was a contrivance that would admit one sitter only at a time, subsequent unauthorised entrance being cut off by an ingenious drop slide. Further elaborate construction also prevented the sitter herself from turning round to peck. She had to remain sitting till some human came and lifted her out.
Just one egg was laid in that patent box. The object of it was also patent—to the hens. ”

“ We bought a big sack of meal—through the medium of Nibletts. If I remember rightly it cost rather more than the pullets.
Still no eggs. Then some of the hens went out of "the pink." For instance, one developed a chronic habit of running centripetally round a constantly diminishing circle, fainting on arriving at the geometrical centre. My distressed aunt called in Nibletts to prescribe. There was only one word for it—that awful word "staggers." There was only one cure for it—death. Should he wring its neck? ”

“ To-morrow, if the General curses a man for rubbing his nose while at attention, I'll openly suggest to him that it is not smart and soldierlike to slouch along with one hand in your pocket while inspecting the ranks. ”

“ Next day he called again with one of his subalterns, a creature called Gubson, who went down to the river to watch Simmonds fish. When he had gone Chaucer told me he had a spare hut.
"Not one of these divisional huts, but a thing we knocked up ourselves. We've nearly finished our job here, and if it's any use to you you can have it. But mind you, I know nothing about this other hut you've got here. If you're caught with that one your blood be on your own head."
"You're a Christian," I told him, and, Gubson and Simmonds returning, the conference had a drink and adjourned. ”

“ Such a character as Miss Jessie, who goes about doing good, and producing incidentally the most benevolent reactions in confirmed misanthropes, demands to be handled with the nicest care if sentimentality is to be avoided. Let me put it that Miss TURNBULL has not always been entirely successful in this respect. Thus, despite some agreeable scenes, the book remains one for the unsophisticated, or for those whose appetite for fictional glucose is robust. There is not very much that can be called plot ”

“ Books dealing with life at the Front have naturally somewhat slackened in volume of late. Perhaps this accounts for some part of my interest in Pushed and the Return Push (BLACKWOOD) . But more must be put down to the lure of the subject, and most of all to the admirable way in which the writer, who chooses to be known as "QUEX," has dealt with it. ”

“ Chaucer was smoking outside my pet hut talking to a couple of his subalterns, and a string of men was lined up beside the field kitchen for tea. Close by, the batman, recovered from his illness, was putting a fishing-rod together, and one of the subalterns blew his nose on a gaudy handkerchief which I recognised at once.
I went straight back and told the Town Major of Ripilly that one of the new divisional huts was being occupied by the Sappers. It wasn't cricket, but it was all I could do.
"That's all right," he said. "Chaucer's acting as divisional R.E. He's entitled to one hut. ”

“ The hens were eating the eggs!
Nibletts said—under his breath—that they were what was known as "blighters." He recommended (deprecating the term) a "stodger." A "stodger" proved to be an egg-shell stuffed with bread-crumbs, mustard and the strongest photographic ammonia.
My aunt said it would be cruel. It was certainly rough on me. Nibletts apologetically directed me to blow an egg—"a shop 'un 'd do." ”

“ All the other men were sitting up and looking on. After a minute or two Chaucer got up and beckoned me outside.
"Look here," he said, "I don't want to scare you, but suppose that chap's got anything infectious. Is there a doctor handy?
"Nowhere nearer than Sailly."
"Well, Gubson tells me they were expecting the M.O. at our camp today. He may have stayed the night. Can you send somebody up to see?"
I sent off an orderly at once, and in half-an-hour a young doctor arrived, and ordered all the other men out of the hut. ”

“ I constructed a "spoof" egg of white enamelled metal, with hinges that opened when a catch was touched. Inside I compressed one of those jack-in-the-box snakes that spring out when free to do so.
It was quite effective—as a parlour-trick. Those hens pecked the catch loose, and that cockatrice fairly staggered them. It was to them a clear case of "nourishing a viper." But all was as before.
Nibletts then gave up the case as (what he might be excused for calling) a "fair corker." Should he wring their (pause) necks? ”

“ If you'll excuse the word—" (Nibletts is always apologising for some term he is about to use, which promises to be inexpressibly shocking to polite ears, and never is) —"they're clinkers."
We ordered a round dozen. We also bought a hen-house fitted with all modern conveniences. The total outlay represented a prince's ransom; but, as I pointed out to my aunt, we had a run for our money.
The hens, when they arrived, were not strictly "as per" advertisement. We bought them as laying pullets, and they didn't lay for quite a time—so far as we knew. ”

“ Frederick remained silent for some time as befits a man who has saved a life, and then arose to have a look at Coleopteron and doubtless to make himself better known to the little hero; but to his pained surprise Coleopteron was not to be found. ”

“ Chaucer and his Royal Engineers were living on the spot—Ardennes waving o'er them her green leaves and so forth—and we were in rest billets (loud roars of raucous laughter) in Ripilly village, the least sanitary spot in the whole war zone.
Chaucer wouldn't let us stay with him in the huts—said the Chief Engineer was very keen on men living next their work. But between Ripilly and the canal wharf was an ideal spot. The chalk downs sloped steeply to the river, and halfway down was a bit of a level plateau just the size for a couple of huts. South aspect; good fishing and bathing ”

“ Everything, in fact, prepares you for one of the tamest of all tame novels, when suddenly the "Thunderbolt" of the title remembers its attributes and bursts from a clear sky. Thenceforward Mr. GEORGE COLMORE'S book is of a particularly painful character. For the horrors which here accumulate on horror's head I find no adequate excuse, even though the villain of the story is a German.
Blanche Maddison, the heroine of The Obstinate Lady (HUTCHINSON) , might without any excess of rudeness be called pig-headed. ”

“ We all got out of that hut in double-quick time, believe me. The doctor was full of orders—half a hundred things to do at once. The man must be strictly isolated. All the contacts—every blessed man who had been in the hut with him—must be placed under supervision. ”

“ They would have been quite ready to listen to ZAGHLUL and his friends if they had not begun by demanding the complete disappearance of British rule. The intelligent foreigner will probably come to the conclusion that Egypt is very like Ireland—except that it has no Ulster. ”

“ This seems a sure sign that the nesting-season is now in full swing, and it seems a pity that we did not think of this method of shell-production during the War.
"No honest German," says Herr SCHEIDEMANN, "can possibly sign the Peace Treaty." The best plan, perhaps, would be to call for volunteers and take the risk as to qualification.
Boxer (amidst a babel of advice) . "LOOK 'ERE—CHUCK IT! I GOT DEMOBILISED AS A ONE-MAN BUSINESS."
From a recent law-report:—
"I say 'Civis Britannicus Sam.'"—Evening Paper. ”