“My dear, how awful!”

There was a pause while we both thought deeply.

“Couldn’t you ...” we began together at last, and each waited for the other to finish.

“Look here,” I remarked, “we’re both very good at finding things for the other to do.  Isn’t there anything we could do together—­a job for ‘respectable married couple,’ you know?”

“Why, of course—­caretaking!  We’ll look after ducal mansions in the silly season, when everybody’s out of town.  Then we’ll see simply heaps of one another.”

“Yes,” I agreed.  “And then in the evenings, when you’ve scrubbed the steps and the woodwork and polished the brass and dusted the rooms and cleaned the grate and cooked the meals and tidied the kitchen, and I’ve inspected the gas-meter and fed the canary, or whatever it is a he-care-taker does, we’ll dress ourselves up and go and sit in the ducal apartments and pretend we’re ‘quality.’”

“And impress our relations by asking them to dinner there,” added Phyllis.  “I think it’s a lovely idea.  We don’t seem to be going to have much money, but we shall see life.  I’m beginning to be quite glad I listened to you yesterday, after all.”

* * * * *

=An Accommodating Creature.=

    “A Respectable woman wants situation as dairymaid, laundress, or
    fowl.”

Cork Constitution.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  =THE GREAT UNCONTROLLED.=

The Mutton.  “I HEAR THEY WANT MORE OF US NOW THE MEATLESS DAYS ARE
OFF.”

The Beef.  “DON’T YOU WORRY.  THANKS TO THE PROFITEERS, PEOPLE CAN’T
AFFORD TO EAT US.”]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE FIRST POTATO-LEAF!]

* * * * *

=THE WATCH DOGS.=

LXI.

My Dear CHARLES,—­Have I ever, in the course of these SECRET and CONFIDENTIAL despatches, called your lordship’s attention to the existence, the very marked existence, of our Hubert, “the little Captain,” who, being out of the battle for the moment, relies upon argument for argument’s sake to keep up his circulation?  It has been said of him that he spends his office time in writing superior letters to his subordinates and insubordinate letters to his superiors; but that, I think, is over harsh.  In any case, as he has now run short of grievances, and the authorities of the B.E.F. regard him as a joke and like him best when his little temper is hot, his fights out here have for some time lacked reality.  I fancy that he was merely in search of a casus belli when, being on leave in the U.K., he conceived the idea of a day’s extension and stepped round to the War Office to demand same as of right.

But the War Office, Charles, is not as other places and War Officers are not like