“Very good, my lord,” the orderly would answer.

* * * * *

Marmaduke sprang forward.  The Hun’s bomb, its pin withdrawn, was about to explode.  Coolly removing his costly gold-and-diamond tie-pin, he thrust this substitute into the appointed place in the terrible sizzling bomb, and stood back with a little smile.  The next moment his General stepped towards him and pinned to his breast the Victoria Cross.

* * * * *

Colonel Blood belonged to the old school—­irascible, even explosive, but at bottom a heart of gold.  Often after thrashing a subaltern with his cane for some neglect of duty he would smile suddenly and invite the offender to dine with him at the Regimental Mess as if nothing had happened.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Lady (asking for the third time).  “HAVE WE REACHED NO. 234 YET?”

Conductor. “YES, MUM.  HERE YOU ARE.” [Stops bus.]

Lady. “OH, I DIDN’T WANT TO GET OUT.  I ONLY WANTED TO SHOW MY LITTLE FIDO WHERE HE WAS BORN.”]

* * * * *

A NEW DANGER.

“I don’t know if you realise,” said Ernest, “that since Army signalling became fashionable a new danger confronts us.”

“If you mean that an enthusiast might start semaphoring unexpectedly in a confined space and get his neighbour in the eye, I may say that I have thought of it,” I answered.  “But it isn’t worth worrying very much about.  He wouldn’t do it more than once.”

“It isn’t that,” said Ernest.  “It’s something much more subtle and insidious.  It is the growing tendency in ordinary conversation to use ‘Ack’ for A, ‘Beer’ for B, ‘Emma’ for M, ‘Esses’ for S, ‘Toe’ for T, etc.  When you told me you were going to see your Aunt at 3 P.M., for instance, you said ‘3 Pip Emma.’  And it isn’t as if you were at all good at Semaphore or Morse either.

“Imagine,” he continued, “the effect upon a congregation of the announcement from the pulpit that the Reverend John Smith, Beer Ack, will preach next Sunday.  Or upon a meeting when told that Mr. Carrington Ponk, J. Pip, will now speak.  Think of Aunt Jane and all her Societies,” he went on gloomily.  “Imagine her saying that she’s going to an Esses Pip G. meeting to-morrow.  It’s a dreadful thought.  It will extend to people’s initials, too.  The great T.P. will be Toe Pip O’CONNOR.  Something will have to be done about it.”

“There’s only one thing to be done,” I said.  “You must get into Parliament and bring in a Bill about it.  All might yet be well if you were an Emma Pip.”

* * * * *

THE HUNGRY HUNS.

“The Berliner Tageblatt’s correspondent states that the ground at St. Pierre Vaast has been converted into a marsh in which half-frozen soldiers, wet to the skin and knee-deep in mud, absorb the shells.”

    New Zealand Paper.