COLONEL WEDGWOOD.  HOW do you expect a workman earning only three pounds a week to afford seven shillings for every novel that he buys?—­Personally I should like to see the cost reduced, but I understand that if the price of novels were fixed at one shilling it would involve the State in an expenditure of ten million pounds annually, even with the present reduced output of novels, which has fallen during the War to little over twenty million tons.

Mr. HAROLD BEGBIE declared himself a whole-hearted supporter of nationalisation.  There was something extraordinarily uplifting in the notion of consecrating one’s talents to the State.  Publishers were too often callous individualists.  Here one would be working for humanity.  If his interview with the KAISER had been issued under State sanction he believed that the Peace would have been signed months sooner.

* * * * *

OFFICIAL CANDOUR.

    “TELEGRAPHIC NOTICE.

    Public is hereby informed that delays to and from offices in Punjab
    are normal.”—­Indian Paper.

Same here.

* * * * *

    OUR VETERANS.

    “London Rifle Brigade, 40 strong, of the 1st Battalion, which
    went out in 1814, arrived in London from France at mid-day
    yesterday.”—­Daily Paper.

* * * * *

A ROYAL INTERVIEW.

“Someone to see you, Miss.”

Thus Mary at about nine o’clock on an April evening at the door of my tiny sitting-room.

There was a strange little quiver in her voice.

Mary is so extremely well trained, and so accustomed, moreover, to queer visitors at the flat, that I looked up in surprise.

“Yes?” I said.  “Is it a lady?”

Mary did not reply immediately; she seemed half-dazed.

“Is it a lady?” I repeated a little sharply.  My usually imperturbable parlourmaid appeared to have taken leave of her senses.

“She said she was a queen, Miss,” she gasped.

At that moment the visitor, evidently grown tired of waiting, calmly floated in through the half-open door and settled down gracefully in the centre of a large gold cushion lying on the end of the Chesterfield.

Fortunately I grasped the situation at once.

“Thank you, Mary,” I said, with what I now feel to have been most commendable coolness in the entirely unprecedented circumstances; “I will ring if I want tea later.”

When the door had closed upon the still gasping Mary I turned apologetically to my visitor.

“I’m so sorry, your Majesty,” I said.  “You see, my maid was not unnaturally a little surprised—­”

“It’s quite all right,” said the Fairy Queen graciously; “I thought you wouldn’t mind my coming in.”

“Of course not,” I said; “I am only too delighted.  Won’t you come nearer the fire?”