“Hang it! you shall talk,” I said to myself; and then aloud, “Tell me all about copra.  I have longed to know what copra is; how it grows, what it looks like, what it is for.”

“You have come to the wrong person,” she replied, with wide eyes.  “I never heard of it.  Or did you say ‘cobra’?  Of course I know what a cobra is—­it’s a snake.  I’ve seen them at the Zoo.”

I put her right.  “Copra, the stuff that the traders in the South Seas deal in.”

“I never heard of it,” she said.  “But then why should I?  I know nothing about the South Seas.”

My stock fell thirty points and I crumbled bread nervously, hoping for something sensible to say; but at this moment “half-time” mercifully set in.  My partner on the other side turned to me suavely and asked if I thought the verses in Abraham Lincoln were a beauty or a blemish; and with the assistance of the London stage, the flight to America, Mrs. FULTON’S Blight, Mr. WALPOLE’S Secret City and the prospects of the new Academy, I sailed serenely into port.  She was as easy and agreeable a woman as that other was difficult, and before she left for the drawing-room she had invited me to lunch and I had accepted.

As I said Good-night to my hostess I asked why she had told me that my first partner had been in the South Seas.  She said that she had said nothing of the sort; what she had said was that during the War she had been stationed with her husband, Colonel Blank, at Southsea.

* * * * *

THE MESSAGE OF HULL.

The Hull Election has been keenly discussed in various papers, but by none with more enthusiasm than The Daily News.  In a special article from the luminous pen of “A.G.G.,” in the issue of April 12th, the true inwardness of the portent is thus revealed:—­

“The message of Hull is a message for all the world.  It is the announcement that this country, whatever its Government may do, will not have a French peace.  It is a declaration to America that the English people are with her in her determination to have a League of Nations’ settlement and no other.  It is the repudiation of Conscription, of war on Russia, of the permanent military occupation of Germany, of imperialism and grab, of war policy in Ireland, of repression in Egypt, of the reckless profligacy and corruption that are plunging Europe into Bolshevism and hurrying this country to irretrievable ruin.”

We confess that we are staggered by the moderation, not to say modesty, of “A.G.G.” as an interpreter of the meaning of the Hull Election.  He has omitted infinitely more than he has inscribed in his list.

The return of Commander KENWORTHY stands, of course, for all these things, but for many others of at least equal importance.

It means the disappearance of influenza, the ravages of which are clearly traceable to the political virus disseminated by the Coalition.