Pretty Nurse—“Oh, no! That’s merely a part of my treatment. I must keep my patients cheerful. I promised this morning to run away with a married man who had lost both his legs.” WAR NEWS IN THE PANTRY “James!” she said, severely. The butler looked up with a guilty flush. “James,” she asked, “how is it that whenever I come into the pantry I find your work at sixes and sevens, and you sprawled out reading the war news?” “Well, ma’am,” the butler answered, “I should say it was on account of them old rubber-sole shoes you’re always wearin’ about the house.” DRAWING THE LINE There was on Master Tommy Whiffles’s face, as he came in from play, an expression of unalloyed satisfaction. He bounced down on the one sound spring of the sofa with a sigh so indicative of profound content that his father was instantly filled with misgivings. Half an hour afterwards Dabbs, from the next street, strode up the garden path and gave a pull at the front-door bell. “If I catch your boy playing war games within a mile of my place again,” he announced, “I’ll trounce him till his hide looks like the paint on a barber’s pole.” “Steady, old fellow, steady,” advised Whiffles, senior. “It’s very stupid for you to throw out rash threats. What boy wouldn’t play war games nowadays, eh? Boys will be boys, you know.” “Let him keep a boy, then,” snarled Dabbs; “it’s when he imagines himself a Prussian army corps and my greenhouse a cathedral that I draw the line.” NO UNION HOURS The soldier was telling the workman about a battle that he had once been in that had lasted from eight o’clock in the morning until seven o’clock at night. His description was most graphic, and he became very enthusiastic as he lived through the stirring scenes again. “There’s one thing I can’t understand about the story,” said the workman, slowly, when he had finished. “You say that the battle began at eight o’clock in the morning and lasted until seven o’clock at night?” “Yes, that’s so,” was the reply. “Then,” retorted the workman, with a puzzled air, “what I can’t make out is, how did you manage about your dinner-hour?” MISSED SOMETHING Green was a raw recruit, and in his ignorance of the ways of the army had committed some slight offense. When brought before the colonel, that worthy was pleased to let him off with only a sharp admonition. The facts of the case appeared in the regimental orders, and when Green read the account he rushed off to his sergeant breathless with indignation. “Why, sergeant, it says in the orders that I was ‘discharged with an admonition,’” he complained. “An’ all I got was a good wiggin’. Some other fellow ’as been and kept that admonition and means to do me out of it. Now, I wants to know what it is, for I mean to have it. I don’t mean to be cheated out of anything!” HIS MEANING IS PLAIN The wounded Irish soldier was relating his adventures to the inquisitive old lady visitor.