Albert Edward says he is annoyed about the rent, but I call that absurd.  Maurice is perfectly aware that there is a war on, and to demand rent from soldiers who are defending his molehill with their lives is the most ridiculous proposition I ever heard of.  As I said before, the situation is most unpleasant, but I don’t see what we can do about it, for digging out Maurice means digging down “Mon Repos,” and there’s no sense in that.  Albert Edward had a theory that the mole is a carnivorous animal, so he smeared a worm with carbolic tooth-paste and left it lying about.  It lay about for days.  Albert now admits his theory was wrong; the mole is a vegetarian, he says; he was confusing it with trout.  He is in the throes of inventing an explosive potato for Maurice on the lines of a percussion grenade, but in the meanwhile that gentleman remains in complete mastery of the situation.

The balloon attached to our back garden is very tame.  Every morning its keepers lead it forth from its abode by strings, tie it to a longer string and let it go.  All day it remains aloft, tugging gently at its leash and keeping an eye on the War.  In the evening the keepers appear once more, haul it down and lead it home for the night.  It reminds me for all the world of a huge docile elephant being bossed about by the mahout’s infant family.  I always feel like giving the gentle creature a bun.

Now and again the Bosch birds come over disguised as clouds and spit mouthfuls of red-hot tracer-bullets at it, and then the observers hop out.  One of them “hopped out” into my horse-lines last week.  That is to say his parachute caught in a tree and he hung swinging, like a giant pendulum, over my horses’ backs until we lifted him down.  He came into “Mon Repos” to have bits of tree picked out of him.  This was the sixth plunge overboard he had done in ten days, he told us.  Sometimes he plunged into the most embarrassing situations.  On one occasion he dropped clean through a bivouac roof into a hot bath containing a Lieutenant-Colonel, who punched him with a sponge and threw soap at him.  On another he came fluttering down from the blue into the midst of a labour company of Chinese coolies, who immediately fell on their faces, worshipping him as some heavenly being, and later cut off all his buttons as holy relics.  An eventful life.

PATLANDER.

* * * * *

A PRECOCIOUS INFANT.

    “Will any kind lady adopt nice healthy baby girl, 6 weeks old,
    good parentage; seen London.”—­Times.

* * * * *

    “The King has given L100 to the Victoria Station free buffet
    for sailors and soldiers.”—­The Times.

In the days of RICHARD I. it was a commoner who furnished the King in this respect. Vide Sir WALTER SCOTT’S Ivanhoe, vol. ii., chap. 9:  “Truly, friend,” said the Friar, clenching his huge fist, “I will bestow a buffet on thee.”