“How?”

“By taking out your note-case at the barrier and showing the girl the back of a Bradbury.  Dazzled by the display of so much wealth, she’d pass you without a murmur.”

“A miserable subterfuge,” Cozens protested.

“Or you and I might walk up to the barrier deep in conversation.  I should then get in front, and the examiner would pull me up for my ticket.  I should fumble before producing my season.  Meantime you would have passed beyond recall.”

“I simply couldn’t do it.”

“Or why not pay at the barrier, if you must pay?”

“Yes, and lose the return ticket rate.  How should I get down to-night?”

“That’s easy.  Buy a platform ticket.  The man at the gate at home will pass you; he knows you.”

“All underhand work,” said Cozens.  “It’s much more dignified to buy a ticket.”

Just then a travelling inspector entered our carriage.

“Tickets, gentlemen, please!”

And Cozens, looking supremely undignified, produced a third-class return, and tried to explain.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Little Girl (reading poster).  “OH, MUMMY, ISN’T THAT VULGAR?  OUGHTN’T THEY TO PUT ’PERSPIRED LABOUR’?”]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(BY MR. PUNCH’S STAFF OF LEARNED CLERKS.)

MR. COMPTON MACKENZIE gives us in Sylvia and Michael (SECKER) a continuation—­I hesitate to say a conclusion—­of the adventures of that amazing heroine, Sylvia Scarlett, which, being not a sequel but a second volume, needs some familiarity with the first for its full enjoyment.  Not that anyone even meeting Sylvia for the first time in mid-course could fail to be intrigued by the astounding things that are continually happening to her.  The variety and piquancy of these events and the general brilliance of Mr. MACKENZIE’S colouring must keep the reader alert, curious, scandalized (perhaps), but always expectant.  His scheme starts with an invigorating plunge (as one might say, off the deep end) into the cabaret society of Petrograd in 1914, where Sylvia and the more than queer company at the pension of Mere Gontran are surprised by the outbreak of war.  Incidentally, Mere Gontran herself, with her cats, whose tails wave in the gloom “like seaweed,” and her tawdry spiritualism—­“key-hole peeping at infinity” the heroine (or the author) rather happily calls it—­is one of the least forgettable figures in the galaxy.  I have no space to indicate what turns of this glittering kaleidoscope eventually bring Sylvia and Michael together during the Serbian retreat, though there are scenes upon which I should like to dwell, notably that of the death of Guy Hazlewood, an incident whose admirable restraint shows Mr. MACKENZIE at his best.  One question I have to ask, and that is