“That’s all right,” said Sanders a few minutes later.  “We can get you out at once on this.  Do you know Briggs?”

“Briggs,” said William, with a sudden sinking feeling.

“I’ll give you a note to him.  He knows all about it.  He’ll get you out at once.”

“Thank you,” said William faintly.

He put the note in his pocket and strode briskly out in search of the dear old queue.

“It will be quicker after all,” he told himself, as he took his place at the end of the queue next to a Lieutenant in the Manchesters.  ("Don’t crowd him,” said a policeman to William; “he wants air.”)

* * * * *

And you think perhaps that the story ends here, with William in the queue again?  Oh, no.  William is a man of resource.  The very next day he met another friend, who said, “Hallo, aren’t you out yet?”

“Not yet,” said William.

“My boy got out a month ago.”

“H-h-h-how?” said William.

“Ah well, you see, he’s going up to Cambridge.  Complete his education and all the rest of it.  They let ’em out at once on that.”

“Ah!” said William thoughtfully.

William is thirty-eight, but he has taken the great decision.  He is going up to Cambridge next term.  He thinks it will be quicker.  He no longer stands in the queue for two hours every day; he spends the time instead studying for his Little Go.

A.A.M.

* * * * *

Trees and fairies.

  The larch-tree gives them needles
    To stitch their gossamer things;
  Carefully, cunningly toils the oak
  To shape the cups of the fairy folk;
    The sycamore gives them wings.

  The lordly fir-tree rocks them
    High on his swinging sails;
  The hawthorn fashions their tiny spears,
  The whispering alder charms their ears
    With soft mysterious tales.

  The chestnut decks their ball-room
    With candles red and white,
  While all the trees stand round about
  With kind protecting arms held out
    To guard them through the night.

R.F.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  The lost Ally.

Peace.  “I hoped he would make my Path easier for me—­not more
difficult.”]

* * * * *

The ministerial treadmill.

(BEING A FREE RESUME OF LORD CURZON’S SPEECH AT THE ECCENTRIC CLUB ON WEDNESDAY THE 22ND.)