When he entered the oak parlour, Aunt Hessy was at one side of the fire, knitting. Uncle Dick was at the other, puffing with the vigour of impatience unusually large clouds from his churchwarden, whilst he stared at a blue foolscap paper. On the table were a mass of other papers, which were tossed about as if somebody had been trying to get them into as confused a mass as possible. ‘Where’s Madge?’ he ejaculated as soon as Philip appeared. ‘You’ve kept her long enough for once in a way, Philip. I am getting into a regular passion with all these rules and restrictions.’ ‘Let me fill a pipe, and I shall be ready to take Madge’s place.’ ‘You!’ was the mirthfully contemptuous exclamation. ‘You don’t know anything about the things, and nobody can take her place.’ ‘But she has sent me, and I’ll do my best to please you, sir,’ retorted Philip with mock humility. ‘Better let Philip do what’s wanted,’ said the dame, as she rose to leave the room; ‘Madge is not well to-night.’ Uncle Dick grumbled at the absence of his secretary, but good-naturedly resigned himself to the services of her substitute. Presently, he found that Philip was so apt in taking up his suggestions that he almost forgot Madge. ERRATIC PENS. The journalist has no time to pick his words or sort his sentences with care. Once he has parted company with his MS., or as it is technically termed ‘copy,’ it is, as a rule, a case of ‘what I have written, I have written;’ so that, given an easy-going ‘press-reader,’ the supplier of news is likely enough to have reason to fret and fume when he sees himself in print; deriving little consolation from knowing that slipshod writing oftentimes makes very funny reading. Assuredly it is amusing to read one morning that the authorities of Alexandria are busily engaged disaffecting that, by all accounts, already sufficiently disaffected city; and the next, to learn our Canadian cousins are discussing the possibility of the abduction of Her Most Gracious Majesty. For these items of news we may be indebted to the compositor’s maladroit intervention; but that convenient scapegoat is hardly answerable for the statement that an opera by Signor Riaci, ‘the son and nephew of the composer of that name,’ had been well received at Vienna; nor can he be held responsible for the information that a town in America rejoices in a Society ‘for the prevention of cruelty to animals with upwards of a hundred dollars in the bank;’ and that a certain event occurred on the night of the twenty-fifth of May, at about two o’clock in the morning.