"Ah, but you weren't among the nobs then," said the bee; "make the most of your time while you're here, for it won't be for long, you know." "Come and see me to-morrow," the little primrose whimpered. "I feel so lonely here. I was happier in the wood." "You won't be alive to-morrow," said the bee cheerily. "But never mind, you have seen the world." And out he bashed again, blowing his motor-horn to clear the way. * * * * * [Illustration: OUR YOUNG VETERANS. _He._ "I SAY, YOUR GRANNIE SEEMS RATHER PUT OUT TO-NIGHT. WHAT'S UP?" _She._ "HUSH! POOR DEAR, SHE'S JUST HEARD MY OTHER GRANNIE IS ENGAGED AND SHE'S SO AFRAID SHE MAY BE LEFT ON THE SHELF."] * * * * * AT THE PLAY. "PYGMALION." The original Pygmalion took a block of dead ivory and made of it so fair a figure of a woman that he fell in love with his own creation, and Aphrodite, at his request, brought it to life. Mr. SHAW'S _Pygmalion_ takes a live flower-girl, turns her into a lifeless wax figure fit for a milliner's shop-window, and flatters himself, as an artist, on the result, but, as a man, proposes to take no interest in it, moral or physical. So you can easily see why almost any other proper name you can think of would have done better for the title. The play itself shows the same typical inconsequence, the same freedom from the pedantry of logic. _Eliza Doolittle's_ ambition is to become fitted for the functions of a young lady in a florist's shop. _Henry Higgins_, professor of phonetics, undertakes for a wager to teach her the manners and diction of a duchess--a smaller achievement, of course, in Mr. SHAW'S eyes, but still a step in the right direction. And he is better than his word. After six months she has acquired a mincing speech, from which she is still liable to lapse into appalling indiscretions; but after another six months the product might pass muster in any _modiste's_ showroom. And then she turns on him and protests that he has spoilt her life. As a flower-girl, she tells him, she used to earn her living honestly; now there is nothing she is good for. Of course, you say, her contact with refined society--"we needs must love the highest when we see it"--has unfitted her for mixing with inferior people. On the contrary. She has, it is true, passed the final test of a series of social functions; but meanwhile all this time of her apprenticeship in manners she has been living her daily life, doing half-menial duties, in the house of _Higgins_, who happens to have no manners at all. One trembles, indeed, to picture the figure that he himself, the master, must have cut when he took his pupil to the halls of the great. [Illustration: We venture to suggest a new attitude to illustrate the ease of manner which one expects from a Master of Phonetics and Deportment. _Henry Higgins_ Sir HERBERT TREE.]