When the proper doctor came round a few minutes later (Burnett says) he found his own thermometer quite inadequate and had to borrow the one that registers the heat of the ward.  When he took it out of my mouth it wasn’t far short of boiling-point, and he wrote straight off to The Lancet about it; also they had to get one of those lightning calculator chaps down to count my pulse.

Long before I came to, Ellis had been discharged, the ward had filled up with fresh cases (except Burnett, of course), and the armistice had been signed.

When I was well enough they handed me a letter which Ellis had left for me.

“DEAR L——­” (it ran),—­“Yes, the rabbits have had their food.  The biggest of them swallowed it all most satisfactorily.

“Your loving ELLIS.”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “AND I SUPPOSE YOU WILL BE DEMOBILISED AS SOON AS YOU GET OUT OF HOSPITAL?”

“OH, NO, MUM.  YOU SEE, I WAS A SOLDIER IN CIVVY LIFE.”]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Hostess.  “WHAT!  GOING ALREADY, DEARS?  IT’S VERY EARLY.”

Little Girl.  “YES—­WE HAVE TO GO ON TO ANOTHER PARTY.  WE’RE SORRY, BUT—­YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS AT THIS TIME OF THE YEAR.”]

* * * * *

SHAKSPEARE on not the least surprising of Mr. LLOYD GEORGE’S appointments:—­

“How now, Woolsack? what mutter you?”
I.  Henry IV., ii. 4, 148.

* * * * *

ANOTHER HEATHEN CHINEE.

We were discussing “slim” practices and the prevalence of the basic desire to get something for nothing.

“If honesty,” said one of the company, “is truly the best policy, then there is a surfeit of the worst politician.”

“Yes,” said another, “and not only in the West.  I assure you, speaking as the director of an insurance concern in Shanghai, that you have no monopoly in inventive chicanery.  Insurance people must always be on their guard, but never more so than among the guileless Celestials.  I can give you a case in point.  Not long ago we received a visit from the wife of one of our policy-holders, saying that her husband was dead and claiming the money.

“‘Certainly,’ we said, ’the payment will be made, but only after the usual investigations,’ and sent her back to her village.  It is not that we were more suspicious of her than of anyone else, but such formalities are essential.  In this case they turned out to be peculiarly necessary, for her husband was no more dead than you are.

“When she got back to him and explained that there is always ’a catch somewhere’ in the insurance business, he took alarm.  A prosecution might be awkward, and at any cost must be evaded.  He therefore played a masterly card by writing the company a personal letter of explanation, which he pretended was despatched before his wife’s return.  The original is in Chinese, but I have an English translation in my pocket-book.”