"I am shaving then; I should cut myself and get all the soap in my eyes. It would be most dangerous. When you were a widow, and Baby and the pony were orphans, you and Mrs. Hodgkin would be sorry. But it would be too late. The Vicar, tearing himself away from Position 5 to conduct the funeral service----" "Jeremy, _don't_!" "Ah, woman, now I move you. You are beginning to see what you were in danger of doing. Death I laugh at; but a fat death--the death of a stout man who has swallowed the shaving-brush through taking too deep a breath before beginning Exercise 3, that is more than I can bear." "Jeremy!" "When I said I wanted to kill someone for you, I didn't think you would suggest myself, least of all that you wanted me fattened up like a Christmas turkey first. To go down to posterity as the large-bodied gentleman who inhaled the badger's hair; to be billed in the London press in the words, 'Curious Fatal Accident to Adipose Treasurer'--to do this simply by way of celebrating your twenty-sixth birthday, when we actually have a bottle of Apollinaris left in the Apollinaris bin--darling, you cannot have been thinking----" His wife patted his head again gently. "Oh, Jeremy, you hopeless person," she sighed. "Give me a new sunshade. I want one badly." "No," said Jeremy, "Baby shall give you that. For myself I am still feeling that I should like to kill somebody for you. Lloyd George? No. F. E. Smith? N-no...." He rubbed his head thoughtfully. "Who invented those exercises?" he asked suddenly. "A German, I think." "Then," said Jeremy, buttoning up his coat, "I shall go and kill _him_." ONE OF OUR SUFFERERS There is no question before the country of more importance than that of National Health. In my own small way I have made something of a study of it, and when a Royal Commission begins its enquiries, I shall put before it the evidence which I have accumulated. I shall lay particular stress upon the health of Thomson. "You'll beat me to-day," he said, as he swung his club stiffly on the first tee; "I shan't be able to hit a ball." "You should have some lessons," I suggested. Thomson gave a snort of indignation. "It's not _that_," he said. "But I've been very seedy lately, and----" "That's all right; I shan't mind. I haven't played a thoroughly well man for a month, now." "You know, I think my liver----" I held up my hand. "Not before my caddie, please," I said severely; "he is quite a child." Thomson said no more for the moment, but hit his ball hard and straight along the ground. "It's perfectly absurd," he said with a shrug; "I shan't be able to give you a game at all. Well, if you don't mind playing a sick man----" "Not if you don't mind being one," I replied, and drove a ball which also went along the ground, but not so far as my opponent's. "There! I'm about the only man in England who can do that when he's quite well."