occurs everywhere before Joe.  Joe was lying on the same arm-chair, and the same idea struck him too; but Binny got there first and continued sitting on the envelope, until, for very shame, I asked Ann, the maid, to spread a newspaper and try them with potato and gravy.  They looked at it and then at me, and then, without tasting, walked off and began their usual after-luncheon ablutions of mouth, face and paws.  But, as I have said, I can endure sarcasm.

The next day, just before luncheon, a mass of sparrow feathers was found on the hall-mat.  The second day there were feathers of a blackbird.  And the third day, when I came down to breakfast, I found a few thrush feathers carelessly left under the breakfast-room table.  I began to search my mind, anxiously wondering whether any of my near neighbours kept chickens.

But the matter was settled that night.  When the dinner-gong sounded, Binny and Joe rose from their arm-chair, looked at the vegetarian dishes now adorning a board which had been wont to send up savoury meaty steams (fish in these parts has become a rarity almost unprocurable, and we had exhausted our allowance of meat at luncheon, which we had taken at a restaurant), and then, with noses in the air and tails erect, stalked haughtily to the drawing-room, and there remained until dinner was finished.

So now the butcher leaves two pennorth of lights at my door regularly.  He assures me that Lord DEVONPORT won’t mind as it is not strictly human food.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  The invaders.

“I suppose old Hindenburg knows what he’s about?”

“Anyhow, every Step takes us nearer the fatherland.”]

* * * * *

The Watch dogs.

LVIII.

My dear Charles,—­Recent events calling for strong comment, I turned to my friend, my brick-red friend who is able to retain his well-fed prosperous look notwithstanding the rigours of trench life, Rrobert James McGrregor.  I took a map with me and, calling his attention to the general position, asked him what about it?  McGregor, as you may guess, is a Scot, whose national sense of economy seems to have spread to his uniform, in that the cap he wears covers but a third-part of his head, and his tunic (which I ought really not to call a tunic but a service jacket) appears to have exhausted itself and its material at the fourth button.  Notwithstanding all this, I attach great weight to his truculent views, and, the better to incite him into something outright, addressed him in My best Scottish, which is, at any rate, as good as his best English.  “Rrrrrobert,” I said, “what like is the von Hindenburg line?” Whereupon McGregor, helping himself to our mess whisky and cursing it as the vilest production of this vile War, spoke out.