* * * * *

    “The enemy went at the moment when he left because he was shelled
    out.”—­Daily Mail.

Of course he might have had a different motive if he had gone the moment after he left.

* * * * *

    “She was wearing a three-quarter red coat with glass buttons to match a
    heavy blue skirt with low neck.”

We never have approved of these decolletes skirts.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  First Flapper. “THE CHEEK OF THAT CONDUCTOR!  HE GLARED AT ME AS IF I HADN’T PAID ANY FARE.”

Second Flapper. “AND WHAT DID YOU DO?”

First Flapper. “I JUST GLARED BACK AT HIM—­AS IF I HAD!”]

* * * * *

THE FRUIT MERCHANT.

“I feel regular down this morning, Sir,” said Private Thomas Weeks, as I seated myself beside his bed; “regular down, I do.”

It was such a very unusual greeting from this source that I said anxiously, “Not the leg gone wrong?”

“No, the old leg’s fine.  It’s the stopping of the imports.”  He indicated the morning paper which he had just laid aside.  “It’s just about bust up my old business.”

I took the paper and glanced down the list of prohibited articles.  Clocks and parts thereof, perfumery, and quails (live) caught my eye.  I didn’t think it could be any of these.

“What was your business?” I asked.

“Fruit merchant, Sir.  Barrow trade, you understand.  ’Awker, some calls it.  But it don’t much matter now what it’s called, ’cos it’s bust up.”

“Not quite bust up, is it?” I said.  “Only a bit cut down for a time.”

“That may be,” he said, “but I got a strong affection for the trade, Sir, a very strong affection, and I can’t ’elp feeling it.  Why, rightly speaking, it was the fruit trade what got me my D.C.M.”

“Did it though?  How was that?”

“Well, it was like this.  I bin callin’ fruit a good many years.  I could call fruit with anyone.  When I calls ‘’Oo sez a blood orange?’ at Kennington Lane, you could ’ear it pretty well as far as New Cross.  Same with ‘’Ave a banana?’ If you’re to do the trade you must make the people ‘ear.  It ain’t no good bein’ like them chaps what stands in the gutter and whispers, ‘Umberella ring a penny,’ to their boots.”

“But what about the D.C.M.?”

“I’m comin’ to it, Sir.  You see, I got it in connection with a little bit o’ work Trones Wood way.  Through various circs, fault o’ nobody really, me and Sam Corney found ourselves alone alongside a dug-out full o’ Bosches.  If we’d ’ad a few bombs we’d ‘a’ bin all right, but we ’adn’t.  I sez to Sam, ’We must scare ’em,’ I sez, and I shouts, ‘’Oo says a blood orange?’ at the top o’ my voice into the dug-out, which was dark, of course, and I stands in the doorway with my bayonet ready.  I can’t say what they mistook it for.  Crack o’ doom, Sam sez.  But eight come out o’ that dug-out with their ’ands up.  I sent Sam off ’ome with ’em, though they’d ‘a’ gone with no escort at all, I reckon, bein’ sort o’ stunned.  And I went on down the trench.