We are, Yours obediently,

    pp. THE FERNDALE GALLERY.

    J.S.

Why they should feel sure it was just as good, unless they remembered my picture, wasn’t very clear, but evidently the receipt had put the wind up them, and I wrote and accepted the substitute at once, because Panmore liked it better even than the original picture.  He said it was an Alken and gave me far more than I would have thought of asking for it, or for the original one.

About a week after selling it I received this wire from the Gallery:—­

    Please return painting sent in error.  Very valuable Alken.  Have
    customer.

    FERNDALE.

“Diamond cut diamond,” I said to myself.  And I replied thus:—­

DEAR SIRS,—­I received your wire, but regret that I cannot comply with your request.  Firstly, because I have already accepted the picture which you regarded as mine or its equivalent, in place of the one that was mine and is now yours; and, secondly, because my friend the feoffee has already bought it, the one that was yours and is now mine, or rather his (you know what I mean, don’t you?), and I haven’t the heart to ask him to return it.

Perhaps yours (the one that is now yours and was mine before), being the equivalent of the one that was yours and is now mine (or rather the feoffee’s), would suit your client.  I can only suggest your having another look for it; the matter so far as I am concerned is at an end.  Yours faithfully,

    THEOPHILUS B. PIPER-CARY.

    P.S.—­You’ll know it when you find it.  There’s a red cow in the
    background.

* * * * *

    “Sentence of Mike Ancon, found guilty of housekeeping, was
    postponed yesterday afternoon.”—­Manitoba Free Press.

This species of crime is almost extinct in England.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE “HESITATION” WALTZ.]

* * * * *

THE RISING EGG.

Whatever may be the decline in the price of eggs their social movement is clearly upwards.  The following passage from The Croydon Advertiser gives an admirable life-history of the egg, from shell to profit-sharing:—­

“Eggs will be dated and graded and sold accordingly, and as soon as they have done laying fattened for table purposes, also young cockerels.  They will be killed and plucked, and the feathers will be sorted and sold in the best markets.  So you see they will receive full market price for their produce; then if they are shareholders they will receive a further profit in the difference between the cost and the selling, also the very big amounts received for the skins and the feathers.”

* * * * *

[Illustration:  HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.