"I wish the Government would tell _me_ what I could do for them." * * * * * "Oh, another three years." * * * * * "What puzzles me is--Where is the paper shortage?" * * * * * "We keep a gramophone in the basement now." * * * * * "No one is more willing than I am to do something." * * * * * "It's the children's festival--that's what I always say." * * * * * HERBS OF GRACE. IX. PENNYROYAL.--A CAROL. _"Far away in Sicily!"-- A home-come sailor sang this rhyme, Deep in an ingle, mug on knee, At Christmas time._ In Sicily, as I was told, The children take them Pennyroyal, The same as lurks on hill and wold In Cotsall soil. The Pennyroyal of grace divine In little cradles they do weave-- Little cradles therewith they line On Christmas Eve. And there, as midnight bells awake The Day of Birth, as they do tell, All into bud the small plants break With sweetest smell. All into bud that very hour; And pure and clean, as they do say, The Pennyroyal's full in flower On Christmas Day. _Far away in Sicily!-- Hark, the Christmas bells do chime! So blossom love in thee and me This Christmas time!_ W.B. * * * * * [Illustration: _Lady_ (_to uniformed friend_). "I SHOULDN'T A BIT MIND WEARING UNIFORM IF ONLY ONE COULD CHOOSE ONE'S OWN COLOURS AT THE WAR OFFICE."] * * * * * THE V.C. My cousin Agatha has been a bad correspondent ever since she married my old friend, George Thimblewell, which means for the past five-and-twenty years, so in ordinary circumstances I do not expect more from her than a "hasty line" to tell me how the youngsters are doing (George, of course, never writes at all). But I must say I was surprised and not a little hurt when, in the skimpy margin of a letter dealing mainly with the difficulty of devising breakfast-dishes, she scribbled in the most casual manner conceivable, "George has got the V.C. at last." George, my dear old school-chum, with the V.C., and his wife tells me of it as casually as if it had been a gumboil! I sat with her letter before me and looked back through the years, seeing us two--George and myself--as we were long before Agatha even knew him. Had I not fostered the yearning for heroic deeds in his young bosom? Was it not possible, nay probable, that the influence of his boyhood's companion had helped to mould his character and prepare it for this glorious if belated achievement? Upon my word it seemed to me that I myself might well take a certain amount of credit for that decoration. And here was his wife mentioning it as though she scarcely expected me to be interested. Never a date, never a detail.