Italians love what's new, so you Suit buildings all, _de haut en bas_, Restored and new--how bad and sad! But you're a still worse _novità_. A peeler pacing here--how queer! A copper checking crimes and larks, When gleams on lone lagoon the moon! A bobby's beat beside St. Mark's! * * * * * BY A BIRKENHEAD MAN.--The LEVER, though strong, could not _quite_ lift the Liberal minority into power, but it brought the Conservative majority down to its LEES! * * * * * LYRE AND LANCET. (_A Story in Scenes._) PART XVII.--A BOMB SHELL. SCENE XXVI.--_A Gallery near the Verney Chamber._ TIME--_About_ 10.30 P.M. _Spurrell_ (_to himself_). I must say it's rather rough luck on that poor devil. I get his dress suit, and all _he_ gets is my booby-trap! (PHILLIPSON, _wearing a holland blouse over her evening toilette, approaches from the other end of the passage; he does not recognise her until the moment of collision_.) EMMA!! It's never _you_! How do you come to be _here_? _Phillipson_ (_to herself_). Then it _was_ my JEM after all! (_Aloud, distantly._) I'm here in attendance on Lady MAISIE MULL, being her maid. If I was at all curious--which I'm not--I might ask you what _you're_ doing in such a house as this; and in evening dress, if you please! _Spurr._ I'm in evening dress, EMMA, such as it is (not that I've any right to find fault with it); but I'm in evening dress (_with dignity_) because I've been included in the dinner party here. _Phill._ You must have been getting on since _I_ knew you. Then you were studying to be a horse-doctor. _Spurr._ I _have_ got on. I am now a qualified M.R.C.V.S. _Phill._ And does that qualify you to dine with bishops and countesses and baronets and the gentry, like one of themselves? _Spurr._ I don't say it does, in itself. It was my _Andromeda_ that did the trick, EMMA. _Phill. Andromeda?_ They were talking of that downstairs. What's made you take to scribbling, JAMES? _Spurr._ Scribbling? how do you mean? My handwriting's easy enough to read, as you ought to know very well. _Phill._ You can't expect me to remember what your writing's like; it's so long since I've seen it! _Spurr._ Come, I like that! When I wrote twice to say I was sorry we'd fallen out; and never got a word back! _Phill._ If you'd written to the addresses I gave you abroad---- _Spurr._ Then you _did_ write; but none of the letters reached me. I never even knew you'd _gone_ abroad. I wrote to the old place. And so did you, I suppose, not knowing I'd moved my lodgings too, so naturally---- But what does it all matter so long as we've met and it's all right between us? Oh, my dear girl, if you only knew how I'd worried myself, thinking you were---- Well, all that's over now, isn't it? [_He attempts to embrace her._