I delivered an irritable attack on a lentil pudding. "Right-O," agreed Marjory. "And I'll ask Joan as well. She won't be able to come until Friday, because she's having some teeth extracted on Thursday." After all Marjory is not altogether without perception. Dinner over I wrote, in my best style, a short spontaneous invitation to Uncle Tom. Margery wrote a more discursive one to Joan. "I think we ought to celebrate this," I suggested. "Let's be extravagant." "All right," said Margery. "What shall it be, champagne or potatoes?" Two days later I received the following:-- "MY DEAR JAMES,--Thank you very much for your invitation, which I am very pleased to accept. The country, after all, is the proper place for old fogeys like myself, as it is very difficult for them to live up to the present-day bustle of a large city. For the last six months I have been doing odd jobs at a munition factory, which, I must admit, has benefited my health in an extraordinary manner, so much so that I have entirely lost the troublesome dyspepsia I suffered from, and now, you will be glad to hear, I am able to eat like a hunter, as we used to say. Hoping to find you all flourishing on Thursday next, about lunch-time, "Your affectionate UNCLE TOM." Instinctively I took my belt in a hole. Then Margery silently placed this in front of me:-- "DARLING MARGERY,--How perfectly sweet of you! I shall simply love it. I am feeling especially beany as I have just finished with the dentist--usually a hateful person--who found out, after all, that it was not necessary to take out any of my teeth. I adore him. No time for more. Heaps to tell you on Friday, "Your loving J.J." "Hullo! Where are you off to?" I asked, as Margery made for the door. "Off to? Why, to put our names down on the Singleweeds' waiting list." I took my belt up another hole and, whistling _The Bing Boys_ out of sheer desperate bravado, made my gloomy way to the potato patch. * * * * * [Illustration: _Plough Girl_. "MABEL, DO GO AND ASK THE FARMER IF WE CAN HAVE A SMALLER HORSE. THIS ONE'S TOO TALL FOR THE SHAFTS."] * * * * * A MASTER OF THE QUILL. "Of Swinburne's personal characteristics Mr. Goose, as was to be expected, writes admirably."--_Daily News and Leader_. * * * * * GERMAN MEASLES. "Francesca," I said, "you must admit that at last I have you at a disadvantage." "I admit nothing of the sort." "Well," I said, "have you or have you not got German measles? It seems almost an insult to put such a question to a woman of your energy and brilliant intellectual capacity, but you force me to it." "Dr. Manley--" "Come, come, don't fob it off on the Doctor. He didn't wilfully provide you with an absurd attack of this childish disease."