hand her attention is apt to wander, and owing to her abstraction play comes to a dead halt.  When a hint is offered that we are waiting for her, with prompt and business-like alacrity but regardless of the rigorous formula, “Place your cards, please,” she will say, “Who led a spade?” there being at the time a club, a heart, and a diamond on the table.  Then, being the only one who has a card of the leader’s suit left, she revokes but is not found out.  When she leads out of turn, as happens on an average four or five times every rubber, if I am against her, I call a suit from her partner, upon which she says, flaring up, “Is that the way you play at the Club?  ‘Cheats never thrive.’” Nor do we, for the simple reason, that she seldom holds less than three honours in each suit, and from five to six trumps besides!

This, as I said, is the sort of Whist I rather enjoy; but when it comes to playing in sober earnest at the Club, there is a different tale to tell.

(This different tale will be told in the Duffer’s next.)

* * * * *

“AIRY FAIRY LILLY UN!”—­One day last week, MR. W.S.  LILLY—­i.e.  W.  “SHIBBOLETHS” LILLY—­delivered an excellent lecture on the Papal-Italian question, and although at Birmingham, it was by no means a brummagem discourse.  But to quote the immortal ballad of Billy Taylor, “When the Captain he come for to hear on’t, He werry much applauded what she’d done,” and, to apply the lines to the present instance, “When the POPE he comes for to hear on’t,” will he “werry much applaud,” the opinions honestly and courteously enough expressed in this lecture?  By the way, “LEO and the Lilly” would make a fine subject for a historical cartoon.  The learned Lecturer took care to observe, with all the true modesty of the humble flower from which his name is derived, that he spoke only the opinion of a party, which party, whether small, considerable, or large, his audience could judge for themselves with the unclothed optic, as the party in question was, not to put too fine a point on it, Himself.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  DANCING MEN.

“WHAT A CHARMING WALTZ THEY’RE PLAYING UPSTAIRS. (MORE CHAMPAGNE, WAITER.  THANKS!)”

“I’VE ONLY JUST COME—­NOT BEEN UPSTAIRS YET.  ONE HEARS THE MUSIC SO MUCH BETTER DOWN HERE. (COLD CUTLET, PLEASE, AND SALAD.  THANKS!)”]

* * * * *

“A LITTLE HOLIDAY!”

[It is proposed that 450,000 colliers belonging to the Miners’ Federation should cease work for a week or a fortnight.  This, it is said, is regarded as an “amicable” Strike, not against the Masters, but to raise the price of coal by producing an artificial scarcity, and thus avoiding a threatened reduction of wages consequent upon over-production.  This the Miners call, “Going on Play.”]

Out-of-Worker to Out-on-Player:—­