It took us some time to get rid of the accumulation of marmalade, margarine and bacon fat which we amassed in our attempts to link fingers across the table; but about 10.30 or so we got settled down to work on your behalf.

Until lunch-time we were fully occupied in giving each other ideas and then explaining why they wouldn’t work.  After lunch the Padre retired to his study to work out, he said, a satire—­after ARISTOPHANES—­which would afford him an opportunity of introducing the Archbishop of CANTERBURY’S speech, and making some whimsical allusions to the legend of the strayed lamb come back to tell his lean Scotch brethren of the green meadows and luscious feeding to be had across the Borders.

My own ambitions were slighter.  I would do a conversation perhaps between the shades of JOHNSON and his BOZZY, or a Limerick, or even just an original witty remark, or, failing all of these, I would select an “apt quotation.”  About tea-time I retired to the garden with a notebook, a pencil and a book of quotations.  By 6.30 I had a list of one hundred and two, and was wavering over the final choice of a parody on “Some hae meat wha canna eat,” and an adaptation of “Be sooople, Davie, in things immaterial,” when my parent came out to the lawn, flushed and excited, with his last three hairs triumphantly erect, and brandished a document in my face.

    It was an ode, Mr. Punch—­an ode five (foolscap) pages long, written
    in Greek!

    I gave him best at once, and then very gently suggested that his
    composition might not in its present unmitigated form be quite
    suited to your tastes and requirements.

I shall spare you the details of the ensuing controversy, but I want you to know that I have spared you much else, and in so doing have forfeited not only my father’s affection but a projected advance on my next quarter-but-three’s dress allowance.

    I hope you need no further proof of my devotion.

    Yours, etc.,

    A DAUGHTER OF THE MANSE.

P.S.—­I was forgetting to say that you will find the bit about the ministers near the bottom of the third column of the tenth page of Thursday’s Scotsman.  Perhaps you can think of a funny treatment yourself.

* * * * *

SONGS OF SIMLA.

III.—­THE FURRIER.

  Akbar the furrier squats on the floor
    Sucking an Eastern pipe,
  Thumbing the lakhs that he’s made of yore,
  Lakhs which creep to the long-dreamed crore
    In a ledger of Western type.

  And all around him the wild beasts sway,
    Cured of their mortal ills—­
  Flying squirrels from Sikkim way,
  Silver foxes that used to play
    Up on the Kashmir hills.