A short lecture follows, in which the ill effects of stuffiness are pointed out, and Victorine is reduced to unconvinced and mutinous silence. As the days pass a little acquiescence in "cette manie pour les courants d'air" is visible, but at the slightest approach of cold every aperture through which air may possibly find its way is surreptitiously closed, and it is only when she is out with her husband taking a walk or refreshing the inner man in a "café" with "un peu de stoot" that we can penetrate by stealth into her bedroom and air it. Jean Baptiste is for the moment in disgrace because he has not been to see Victorine for a week. He is threatened with all sorts of penalties when he finally decides to present himself. Primarily Victorine is going to present him with _savon_, which appears in the vernacular to be the Belgian equivalent for beans. She is also going to wash him the head. * * * * * [Illustration: _First Old Dame._ "WELL, MY DEAR, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR THE COUNTRY?" _Second ditto._ "I AM KNITTING SOCKS FOR THE TROOPS." _First Old Dame (robustly)._ "KNITTING! _I_ AM LEARNING TO SHOOT!"] * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. (_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._) _Sir John Lubbock_, whose Life, by Mr. HORACE HUTCHINSON, MACMILLAN publishes in two volumes, was one of the most honourable men who figured in public life during the last half-century. He was also one of the most widely honoured. Under his name on the title-page of the book appears a prodigious paragraph in small type enumerating the high distinctions bestowed upon him by British and foreign literary and scientific bodies. Forestalling the leisure of a bank-holiday I have counted the list and find it contains no fewer than fifty-two high distinctions, one for every week of the year. These were won not by striking genius or brilliant talent. Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, to preserve a name which the crowning honour of the peerage did not displace in the public mind, was by nature and daily habit constitutionally industrious. After Eton he joined his father's banking business. In his diary under date Christmas Day, 1852, being the nineteenth year of his age, he gives an account of how he spends his day. It is too long to quote, but, beginning by "getting up at half-past six," it includes steady reading in natural history, poetry, political economy, science, mathematics and German. Breakfast, luncheon and tea are mentioned in due course; but there is no reference to dinner or supper. These functions were doubtless regarded by the young student as frivolous waste of time.