On which the young scoundrel, knowing well that it is elsewhere, pipes out, “There it is, Fa-ther, there it is, Fa-ther!” with an unctuous humility shading into impatient contempt that is simply indescribable, being indeed too revolting for words.

Then, as the father still wavers, his son makes some observations which I cannot quite follow, but take to be on the fairness of the game as played with a sportsbird, and the certainty that the luck must turn sooner or later.  After which he exhorts him—­this time in plain English—­to “be a bird.”  Whereupon the doting old parent decides that he will be a bird and back the middle thimble, and the next moment I hear the son exclaim, evidently referring to the rook, “No, ’e’s got it; no, ’e’s got it.  Cheer up!  Cheer up!” with a perfunctory concern that is but a poor disguise for indecent exultation.  I am not suggesting, by the way, that birds are in the habit of dropping their “h’s”—­but this one does.  There are times when he is so elated by his parent’s defeat that he cannot repress an outburst of inarticulate devilry.  And so the game goes on, minute after minute, hour after hour, every day from dawn to dusk.  The amount of grains or grubs or whatever the stakes may be (and it is not likely that any rook would play for love), that that old idiot must have lost even since I have been here, is beyond all calculation.  He has never once been allowed to spot the right thimble, but he will go on.  As to the son’s motive in permitting it, any bird of the world would tell you that, if you possess a senile parent who is bound to be rooked by somebody, it had better be by a person with whom you can come to a previous arrangement.

Now I come to think of it, though, I have not heard the unnatural offspring once since I sat down to write this.  Can it have dawned at last upon his parent that this is one of those little games where the odds are a trifle too heavy in favour of the Table?  Or can the son have sickened of his own villainy and washed his claws of his shady confederate?  I don’t know why, but I am almost beginning to hope....  No; through the open window comes the well-known cry, “There it is, Fa-ther!  There it is, Fa-ther!  Be a bird!  Be a bird!...  No, ’e’s got it!  No, ’e’s got it!  Cheer up!  Cheer up!” They are at it again!

F.A.

* * * * *

A SHADY TENANT.

    [From inquiries made by a Daily Chronicle representative it
    appears that the present demand for housing accommodation is
    such that people no longer draw the line at ghosts.]

  The problem at last is a thing of the past;
    Doubts and fears, Geraldine, are at rest;
  We can put up the banns and make definite plans,
    For the love-birds will soon have a nest. 
  I’ve inspected, my sweet, the sequestered retreat
    In which we are destined to dwell,
  And on thinking things out I have not the least doubt
    It will suit us exceedingly well.