Materfamilias (aside).  Bid three-fifteen, JOHN, but not a penny more!

Paterfamilias (weakly).  Three-fifteen!

Auctioneer.  Three-fifteen!  Four!  Going at four!  Last time at four!  All done, four!  Going, going—­gone! (Drops hammer.) Sold at four pounds, SAM! (Looks round.) Who bid four? [No response, as the last bid was imaginary.

Sam (huskily).  Gen’l’man as bid four jest slipped hout, Sir.

Auctioneer (tartly).  Tut—­tut—­tut! Too bad, really.  Well, Sir, then I must take your bid.  Sold to this Gentleman, SAM, at Three-fifteen!

[Paterfamilias, highly pleased, pays deposit, and arranges to send for his bargain in the morning.  As he and his “good lady” leave, they notice close by, three men with barrows, each bearing a blazingly red and strongly-smelling chest of drawers.  Materfamilias complacently remarks on the manifest superiority of the article they have purchased, to “that red rubbish.”  Next morning they receive, instead of their own “bargain,” one of those identical brand-new, badly-made, unseasoned, thinly-veneered “shop ’uns,” which are “blown together” by the gross for such purposes.  They protest, but vainly, notwithstanding their true assertion that the drawers they received contain “fresh shavings” instead of the “sprigs of blooming lavender” they had observed in those they thought they had purchased.  Paterfamilias, a week later, looking in at the Auction-room, sees what he could swear to be the very chest of drawers he had purchased being “sold again” in a similar fashion.

* * * * *

“MY PRETTY JANUS, OH NEVER LOOK SO SHY!”

[Illustration:  JANUS DRURIOLANUS.

Suggestion for Costume at another Masked Ball.]

AUGUSTUS DRURIOLANUS is greater than ever.  It is the penitential season of Lent; some excellent persons renounce all worldly amusements; others, not quite so excellent, and both lots thinking, it may be, no small beer of themselves, we may term the first lot Treble Excellent and the second Double Excellent—­the latter division think that concerts possibly, sacred concerts certainly, and certain other forms of mild and non-theatrical entertainments, are of a sufficiently severe character to constitute, as it were, a form of discipline.  Then there are the larger proportion of those “who,” as Mrs. Malaprop would say, “‘care for none of these things,’ like GALILEO, my dear,” and who inquire.  “What is the state of the odds as long as we think we’re happy?” and who would indulge in balls and theatres, and in every other form of amusement, while such pursuits afforded them, or seemed, to afford them, any pleasure.  To the first section, i.e., the “unco guid,” DRURIOLANUS has nothing to offer, not even a course of sermons by popular preachers; but to the two others he has