"The Queen of Croatia, one of those convenient operatic Balham royalties...."--_Liverpool Daily Post_. Won't Tooting be jealous! * * * * * "To one who has been long enough away from the centre of things almost to forget what it is like, a walk along Pall Mall yesterday brought some curious reflections. From the Circus to Hyde Park Corner not a single luxurious private motor-car or horse-drawn carriage was to be seen. It was not the Pall Mall of old days."--_Evening Paper_. No, it seems to have been much more like Piccadilly. * * * * * [Illustration: _Troop-ship Officer_. "ANYTHING I CAN DO FOR YOU, SIR?" _Enterprising American_. "I GUESS SO. I'M THE CINEMATOGRAPH OPERATOR WHO'S GOING TO TAKE A FILM THE FIRST TIME YOU'RE TORPEDOED, AND I'VE GOT A LETTER FROM YOUR FOLKS INSTRUCTING YOU TO GIVE ME EVERY FACILITY."] * * * * * A SURPRISE PARTY. "Five-and-thirty wounded Tommies coming to tea and one of them coming to his death, but he doesn't know it," moaned Emily, and waved a knife round her head. I saw what had happened. All this bun-baking and cake-making had been too much for my poor wife. She had been living in the oven for a week. "You're overdone. Lie down and try to get a little nap before they come," I said soothingly. "Everything's ready." "Will he die without a sound, or will he gurgle?" said Emily, and brought the knife within an inch of my nose. "No one is going to die at our tea-party, dear," I said, and ducked. "Not after swallowing _that_?" shrieked Emily, and lunged at me with the knife again. I got it firmly by the handle this time, and I recognised Emily's special cake-knife, an instrument wrought to perfection by long years of service, sharp as a razor down both sides, with a flexible tip that slithered round a basin and scooped up the last morsels of candied-peel. But the flexible tip was gone. I understood Emily's distraught condition. You can replace a diamond tiara; money won't buy a twenty-year-old cake-knife. "Try and bear it, dear," I said. Emily pointed to the table weighed down with Madeiras and rocks and almonds and sultanas and gingers. "It's inside one of them," she said. For the moment I failed to grasp her meaning. She explained. "I've made six dozen. The knife was all right when I started; a little bent, nothing more. It was when I was mixing the last that I noticed the tip was missing." It was a difficult position. There was no time to submit the cakes to the X-rays; the advance party was streaming through the gate. "Dear fellows! I wonder which one it will be," said Emily, and clung round my neck.