When I got back (I tried to get my wife to go, but she said she would rather I went, and that I wasn't really as red as I felt)--when I got back I could see that it had dawned upon him that I had wheedled him there without his knowing exactly where he was, and that he was determined not to be had. He asked me to sign for the installation. Alas, I could not do that. It was only then that I realised that I am constitutionally honest; besides they might find me out. We both tried to turn his thoughts to pleasanter topics. Perhaps asking him to have a glass of port was a mistake there are times when even bribery is bad policy. Briefly, after a mumbled remark that "there was something fishy," he refused to leave the box. Dry-eyed we watched him take it all down and depart in a dudgeon. We were left with a vision of shameless visitors with their twopenny calls and interminable bills running up even while we were away on our holidays. "Let us," I said hoarsely--"let us go and look at our child; she is all we have left now." Moodily we turned to go upstairs. In the hall we stopped dead. Upon the floor was the wretched paper which my Victorian conscience and my twentieth-century caution had prevented me from signing. "He must," said my wife with her usual perspicacity, "have dropped it on his way out. Let's see who the box was really meant for." Picking it up I read aloud in cold firm tones _my own name and address_. The box had been meant for us after all. * * * * * We got it in the end. It came one morning, like the flowers in Spring, quite suddenly, and we spent a whole day telephoning to our friends to tell them we had a coin-box at last. I also wrote a letter full of gratitude to the telephone people and got the reply that, "owing to the shortage of plant, etc.," they regretted that for the time being they could not grant my request for a telephone. We did not tell them that we had had one for three months; Heaven knows what would have happened. And we are left in peace--now that our visitors have heard that we have a coin-box. L. * * * * * [Illustration: THE PIONEERS. SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF UNDERGROUND TACTICS.] * * * * * TWO "STEIN"-WAY GRANDS. BY A PHILISTINE. EINSTEIN and EPSTEIN were wonderful men, Bringing new miracles into our ken. EINSTEIN upset the Newtonian rule; EPSTEIN demolished the Pheidian School. EINSTEIN gave fits to the Royal Society; EPSTEIN delighted in loud notoriety. EINSTEIN made parallels meet in infinity; EPSTEIN remodelled the form of Divinity. Nature exhausted, I hopefully sing, Can't have more Steins of this sort in her sling. * * * * *