Mother looked up quickly. "But what of the extra ten pounds I insisted on your taking with you in case of emergency?" Ernest appeared slightly shame-faced. "Well, when those fatuous asses hauled me up for trespassing they left me in the charge of a gamekeeper while they 'phoned for the police. I induced the chap to let me go, and I had to square him with a tenner." There was a long pause. Mother's mind seemed to be working at some abstruse calculation. Then she dried her eyes and looked up with the triumphant smile of the woman who gets the last word and wins her point. "And so, Ernest," she said, "it _did_ cost you five guineas a week to 'breathe the pure air of Heaven' after all." * * * * * Illustration: "SORRY TO HEAR YOUR HUSBAND IS LAID UP AGAIN, MRS. GRIGGS." "YES. THE TROUBLE IS HE BE AN OLD MAN, AND HE _WILL_ TURN A DEAF EAR TO THE WRITIN' ON THE WALL." * * * * * PRAWLING'S THEORY. (_By a Student of Jargon._) By the courtesy of Professor Prawling, F. R. S., who has supplied us with the MS. of his recent lecture before the Psycho-Economical Society, we are in a position to give our readers a full account of that masterly and epoch-making address, of which, strange to say, no adequate notice has so far appeared in any newspaper. Professor Prawling's credentials, we may premise, are of a nature to inspire the utmost confidence. His father, Theodore Prawling, was the inventor of the speedle, that remarkable implement, fully described by _Punch_ in the early seventies, which rendered possible the emulsification of all gelatinoid substances and revolutionised the marmalade industry. He is duly commemorated by the fine statue which is one of the principal features of Dundee. His son, however, has even greater claims on our respect and admiration. Educated at the High School, Crieff, and the Universities of Glasgow, Upsala, the Sorbonne and Princeton, he is generally recognised in the United States as the foremost authority on Paedological Gongorism and the cognate science of Mendelian Economics. The problem with which he grapples in his latest contribution to these fascinating studies may be tersely summed up in a single sentence: Can a healthy metabolism be superinduced on an economic system already showing symptoms of extrinsic conglucination?