MORE NEWS FROM THE AIR.

THE ALLIES.

The other day I was in a country house whose owners are so lost to shame as still to keep pets.  There is a dog there which is actually allowed to eat, in defiance of all those Times’ correspondents whose sole idea of this stimulating and unfailingly devoted animal is that it is personified greed on four legs.  There are two or three horses of unusual intelligence, which no doubt our friend the Hun would long since have devoured, but which, even though hunting is over, are by some odd freak of sentiment or even of loyalty still kept alive.  There are rabbits.  And there is a bird in a cage against the wall of a small yard.  This bird is a chaffinch, which a friend had brought over from France.

After I had fraternised shamefully with all these deplorable drones, my hostess drew my attention to the French chaffinch, a line big fellow, very tame and cheerful.  “We will feed him,” she said, “and then you will see something that happens every day.  Something very interesting.”

So saying she poured into a receptacle for the purpose enough seed, no doubt, to make, mixed with other things, several admirable thimble-loaves of bread substitute, and told me to watch.

I watched, and very soon the French chaffinch, having eaten a certain amount of the seed, dashed his beak amid the rest with such violence that it was spilt over the pan, out of the bars and down to the ground below.

“That’s very wasteful,” I said.  “Lord DEVONPORT wouldn’t like that—­Lord DEVONPORT wouldn’t;” this being the kind of facetious thing we are all saying just now, and something facetious being in this particular house always, for some reason or other, expected of me.

“Wait a minute,” my hostess replied.  “There’s more reason in it than you think.”

And there was.

The whole point of this mediocre narrative consists in the fact that within a few seconds some dozen sparrows had descended to the yard and were feeding busily while the chaffinch watched from above.  And this happens at every mealtime.

To what extent we are contributing to the French Commissariat I cannot say; but with my own eyes I have seen a French citizen being systematically generous to his English cousins.

* * * * *

    “The sale [of potatoes] started at 6 a.m., and the first omnibus from
    London brought over 200 buyers down.”—­Weekly Dispatch.

A gross case of overcrowding.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Civilian (who has been asked to luncheon at outlying fort).  “I SAY, YOU KNOW, I CAN’T POSSIBLY LAND BY THAT ABSURD LITTLE LADDER.”

Host. “ROT, OLD CHAP.  I’VE HAD THE VERY DICKENS OF A JOB TO GET YOU A PASS—­AND, BESIDES, PEOPLE DON’T OFTEN FALL IN.”]

* * * * *

DOUBLE ENTENTE.