Daddy came home from the office early one evening and mother had not returned from some friends whom she had been visiting for tea.

Little four-year-old Gwennie ran up to her father’s side.  “Daddy,” she cried, “I’ve been wanting to see you for a long time when mother’s not near.”

“Why, my little girl?” asked father.

“Well, dad,” answered Gwennie, “please don’t tell mother, because she’s an awful dear, but I don’t think she knows much about bringing up children.”

“What makes you think that?” asked her father.

“Well,” replied Gwennie, “she makes me go to bed when I am wide awake and she makes me get up when I am awfully sleepy.”

BOBBY—­“Daddy, look!  There’s an aeroplane.”

ABSORBED DADDY—­“Yes, dear—­don’t touch it.”

PARROTS

“Mercy!  How that bird swears!” exclaimed the would-be purchaser.  “What would my husband say?”

“I dunno, ma’am,” replied the dealer.  “But whatever it was this ’ere parrot could repeat it right over after him.”

OLD LADY—­“I want you to change that parrot I bought from you—­he doesn’t speak at all, and you said he’d repeat every word he heard.”

SHOPMAN—­“Yes, madam, and so he would—­but you took him in such a hurry that I hadn’t time to tell you he was deaf.”

A.E.  Clark, editor of The City Bulletin, of Columbus, Ohio, was with a friend who was campaigning for the Red Cross.  The friend knocked at a door and a voice said, “Come in.”

His friend tried the door, then shouted, “It’s locked!”

“Come in,” repeated the voice, and the campaigner replied: 

“It’s locked.”

“Come in.”

“It’s locked.”

At that point a woman put her head out of a window next door and said: 

“There’s no one at home.  You’re talking to the parrot.”

PARTNERSHIP

The partners of a well-known Stock Exchange house were having a dinner conference at an uptown hotel.  One of them appeared worried during the progress of the meal, and finally he was queried as to the cause of his fit of abstraction.

“I just happened to remember that I neglected to lock the safe before I left the office,” he replied.

“Why worry?” said another member of the firm.  “We are all here.”

“I’ll clean th’ snow off yer walk for a quarter.”

“Why, I just paid a quarter to have it cleaned.”

“Tain’t half done.”

“Come, come, that isn’t a nice way to abuse a fellow worker.”

“Oh, dat’s all right—­he’s me pardner.”

A bright German gentleman, retired from business, relates the following little anecdote: 

“Going down to New York the other night on the boat,” said he, “I got chatting with a German acquaintance, and asked him what he was doing.