“How do you do?” I greeted him.  “Many happy returns, dear old thing!” As he held out his hand I put something into it.  “A box of chocolates,” I explained; “I bought them for your birthday!”

* * * * *

“Wanted, for Low Comedian, really Funny Sons.”—­The Stage.

As a change, we suppose, from the eternal mother-in-law.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Inveterate Golfer (stung by the leading article).  “I SUPPOSE I AM REALLY NON-ESSENTIAL.  IT’S HARD TO REALISE THIS WITH ONE’S HANDICAP JUST REDUCED TO SEVEN.”]

* * * * *

THE REGIMENTAL MASCOT.

When his honour the Colonel took the owld rigiment to France, Herself came home bringin’ the rigimental mascot with her.  A big white long-haired billy-goat he was, the same.

“I’ll not be afther lavin him at the daypo,” says Herself; “’tis no place for a domestic animal at all, the language them little drummer-boys uses, the dear knows,” says she.

So me bowld mascot he stops up at the Castle and makes free with the flower-beds and the hall and the drawin’-room and the domestic maids the way he’d be the Lord-Lieutenant o’ the land, and not jist a plain human Angory goat.  A proud arrygent crature it is, be the powers!  Steppin’ about as disdainy as a Dublin gerrl in Ballydehob, and if, mebbe, you’d address him for to get off your flower-beds with the colour of anger in your mouth he’d let a roar out of him like a Sligo piper with poteen taken, and fetch you a skelp with his horns that would lay you out for dead.

And sorra the use is it of complainin’ to Herself.

“Ah, Delaney, ’tis the marshal sperit widin him,” she’d say; “we must be patient with him for the sake of the owld rigiment;” and with that she’d start hand-feedin’ him with warmed-up sponge-cake and playin’ with his long silky hair.

“Far be it from me,” I says to Mikeen, the herd, “to question the workings o’ Providence, but were I the Colonel of a rigiment, which I am not, and had to have a mascot, it’s not a raparee billy I’d be afther havin’, but a nanny, or mebbe a cow, that would step along dacently with the rigiment and bring ye luck, and mebbe a dropeen o’ milk for the orficers’ tea as well.  If it’s such cratures that bring ye fortune may I die a peaceful death in a poor-house,” says I.

“I’m wid ye,” says Mikeen, groanin’, he bein’ spotted like a leopard with bruises by rason of him havin’ to comb the mascot’s silky hair twice daily, and the quick temper of the baste at the tangles.

The long of a summer the billy stops up at the Castle, archin’ his neck at the wurrld and growin’ prouder and prouder by dint of the standin’ he had with the owld rigiment and the high-feedin’ he had from Herself.  Faith, ‘tis a great delight we servints had of him I’m tellin’ ye!  It was as much as your life’s blood was worth to cross his path in the garden, and if the domestic maids would be meetin’ him in the house they’d let him eat the dresses off them before they dare say a word.