This is what occurred.  First a bell rang and then a spring released the door of the cage immediately over the hole which your ball had entered, so that it swung open.  The little pig within, after watching the previous infirmity of your aim with dejection, if not contempt, had pricked up his ears on the sound of the bell, and now smiled a gratified smile, irresistible in infectiousness, and trotted out, and, with the smile dissolving into an expression of absolute beatitude, slid voluptuously down the plank:  to be gathered in at the foot by an attendant and returned to its cage all ready for another such adventure.

It was for these moments and their concomitant changes of countenance that you paid your money.  To taste the triumph of good marksmanship was only a fraction of your joy; the greater part of it consisted in liberating a little prisoner and setting in motion so much ecstasy.

We do not use baby pigs in this entertaining way in England.  At the most we hunt them greased.  But when other beguilements weary we might.  The R.S.P.C.A. could not object, the little pets are so happy.  And what a privilege is theirs, both alive and dead, to enchant creation’s lord.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Ordinary Artist (to Ultra-Modern ditto).  “HOW TOPPING THOSE KIDDIES LOOK WITH THE SUN ON THEM!  OH, I FORGOT—­I MEAN THOSE THINGS SPLASHING ABOUT OVER THERE.  OF COURSE YOU DON’T SEE THEM AS HUMAN BEINGS.”]

* * * * *

    “In order to give a lead in economy King George and Queen Mary and a
    number of peeresses have decided not to wear plumes or tulle veils at
    the opening of Parliament.”—­Australian Paper.

Very self-sacrificing of HIS MAJESTY.

* * * * *

    “‘My husband says I must leavee teo-night,’ said a wife at Acton.  ’Oh,
    hee eceanee’t givee you ... notice to quit,’ said the magistrate.”—­
    Evening Paper.

His worship seems to have settled the matter with e’s.

* * * * *

THE MINISTERING ANGEL.

    [Yawning, it is now claimed, is an excellent thing for the health.]

  Stretched prone upon my couch of pain,
    An ache in every limb,
  Fell influenza having slain
    My customary vim,
  I mused, disconsolate, about
    The pattern of my pall,
  When lo!  I heard a step without
    And Thomson came to call.

  “Your ruddy health,” I told him, “mocks
    A hand too weak to grip
  The tea-cup with its captive ox
    And raise it to my lip;”
  To which he answered he had come
    To bring for my delight
  Red posies of geranium
    And roses pink and white.

  ’Twas kind of Thomson thus to seek
    To mitigate my gloom,
  But why did he proceed to speak
    Of how he’d reared each bloom,
  Telling in language far from terse
    On what his blossoms fed
  And how he made the greenfly curse
    The day that it was bred?