The Adjutant looked serious when he read it.  So did Cook, for he thought the Adjutant had noted the London address and had remembered the business was in Bristol.  But it was all right.  It wasn’t that at all really.  Pencil and squared paper are poor means of conveying information at any time, and when the Adjutant had been assured that the business was really “wholesale hardware,” and not “wholesale hardbake,” as he had first read it, everything went swimmingly.  The C.O. signed it and off it went on its momentous journey.  Cook began to take a renewed interest in his platoon, and, having discovered the recalcitrant one of No. 11 actually coming on parade with only the front of the tip of his bayonet-scabbard polished, he took a fiendish delight in seeing the criminal writhing under the brutal and savage sentence of three days’ C.B.

A week later he got a great surprise.  His brother-partner turned up with a draft of men and found himself posted to the battalion.  The brothers met, as only brothers can, with the words, “What the deuce are you doing here?” Highly elated, Cook told him about the application for business leave and gloated over his chances of being home first, and on full pay too.  His brother was intensely amused, and they both laughed heartily, when he told us that he himself, while waiting at the reception-camp with the draft, had put in much the same kind of application, saying the same kind of things about Cook.

But when they realised that both applications would be forwarded to the same Divisional Headquarters for consideration the joke lost some of its savour.  And when the Adjutant called them up and handed the two returned applications pinned together both brothers needed all their qualities of toughness and rigidity which, as I understand, are acquired in the wholesale hardware business.

L.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Shortsighted Traveller.  “IS THERE SOME DELAY ON THE LINE, MY GOOD MAN?”

Naval Officer.  “WHO THE ——­ DO YOU THINK I AM, SIR?”

Traveller.  “ER—­N-NOT THE VICAR, ANYWAY.”]

* * * * *

“HOMES FURNISHED COMPLETE.”

    “Oak bedstead, 3 ft. 6 in., with wife and Wool Mattress, new
    condition, L5 10s. 0d. lot.”—­Provincial Paper,

    “One Parsel Furnishing goods curtains, cushion covers, etc.,
    Rs. 26; one bundle babies, Rs. 5.—­Apply Mrs. ——.”—­Ceylon
    Independent.

* * * * *

    “Temporary Cook wants Hampshire.”—­Morning Post.

Really quite moderate.  Some cooks nowadays seem to want the whole earth.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  POST-WAR PROBLEMS.

Adjutant (who has been interrupted in his real work by a summons from Colonel).  “YES, SIR?”