It was empty save for one table.  Gaspard walked towards it, hoping for a little conversation.  The occupant lowered the newspaper from in front of his face and looked up.

It was too much for Gaspard.

“Coward!” he shrieked.

Jacques, who had been just going to say the same thing, hastily substituted “Serpent!”

“I know you,” cried Gaspard.  “You send your instructor up in your place.  Poltroon!”

Jacques picked up his glass and poured the wine of the country over his friend’s head.

“Drown, serpent,” he said magnificently.  He beckoned to the waiter.  “Another bottle,” he said.  “My friend has drunk all this.”

Gaspard removed the wine from his whiskers with Jacques’ paper and leant over him.

“This must be wiped out in blood,” he said slowly.  “Name your weapons.”

“Submarines,” said Jacques after a moment’s thought.

A.A.M.

* * * * *

THE SWANS OF YPRES.

  Ypres was once a weaving town,
  Where merchants jostled up and down
    And merry shuttles used to ply;
  On the looms the fleeces were
  Brought from the mart at Winchester,
    And silver flax from Burgundy.

  Who is weaving there to-night? 
  Only the moon, whose shuttle white
    Makes silver warp on dyke and pond;
  Her hands fling veils of lily-woof
  On riven spire and open roof
    And on the haggard marsh beyond.

  No happy ghosts or fairies haunt
  The ancient city, huddling gaunt,
    Where waggons crawl with anxious wheel
  And o’er the marshland desolate
  Win slowly to the battered gate
    That Flemings call the Gate of Lille.

  Yet by some wonder it befalls
  That, where the lonely outer walls
    Brood in the silent pool below,
  Among the sedges of the moat,
  Like lilies furled, the two swans float;
    “The Swans of Ypres” men call them now.

  They have heard guns and many men
  Come and depart and come again,
    They have seen strange disastrous things,
  When fire and fume rolled o’er their nest;
  But changeless and aloof they rest,
    The Swans of Ypres, with folded wings.

* * * * *

    “Will Treasury notes ever be displaced by boxes of chocolates?
    “—­Daily Paper.

Certainly.  Ours often are.

* * * * *

From the report of the Committee on the Staffing of Government Offices we gather that there has been a good deal of overflapping.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  TRANSPORT FACILITIES.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Mistress. “OH, JANE, HOW DID YOU DO THAT?”

Maid. “I’M VERY SORRY, MUM; I WAS ACCIDENTALLY DUSTING.”]