"Mayn't I see?" I asked. He kept his thumb there. "Yes, and her mother will have something to say to it too," he went on, "and"--he chuckled richly--"my mother too. The idea!" "Mayn't I see it?" I asked again. "As if nobody in this world mattered but toffs," he said. "Perhaps they did once; but they're not going to for ever, I can tell you." "You're a Socialist?" I suggested. "No, I'm not," he said. "I don't hold with Socialism. But I'm sure after this war's over toffs aren't going to be quite everything that they were before it began. "The cheek of it!" he continued, with another glance at the paper. "Lumme, I'd like to be there when she lets herself go!" "Your mother?" I said. "No, I didn't mean her just then; but she'd be all right to listen to, too. She can't half speak her mind! No, I meant my fiancy. I've just left her; been there for Sunday." "Have you been engaged long?" I asked. He laughed. "No," he said. "That's the point. We only got engaged this year. I'd courted her a long time, but it wasn't till New Year's day that we fixed it up." "I congratulate you," I said, "and her too. I think she's lucky to have a soldier for her husband. I hope you're both very happy." "Happy!" he said; "I should think we were. That's what makes me so disgusted with this paper. Look at it." At last he removed his thumb and showed me a paragraph beginning with the words, "The first interesting engagement of the New Year is that between Captain Dudley Hornby and Lady Marjorie Feilding." "The 'first'!" he said scornfully. "The 'first'! She and her mother on that," he chuckled, "and my mother to help them! (We live close by). My, I wish I could be there to hear it. Give it me back, please; I must mark it and post it. What a time they'll have!" I would like to be there too. * * * * * "A few days ago a military concert was given [at Antwerp], but upon the band striking up the tune of 'Heil dir im Siegerterang' the people hooted. They were thereupon charged by the police, and since that occasion mitrailleuses have been posted in front of the German musicians." _Glasgow Evening Times._ In this matter our sympathies are with the audience, because (1) It was surely entitled to hoot a band which did not know the name of its own National Anthem; (2) The police should not have been allowed to make any charge at a free concert. * * * * * THE BALLYMURKY CONTINGENT. "I towld you how the Docthor's War speech sent iv'ry man from Ballymurky to the war," said old Martin Cassidy to me. "But did I not tell you how the Widdy O'Grady persuaded Terence Connelly to join them? "I did not? Well, well. It all came out the very day the boys were leaving Ballymurky. Seventeen of them there were no less, and the Docthor there reviewing them this way and that way till he had you bewildered with the inthricacies of them.