* * * * *

FELINE AMENITIES.

    “Cats’ Happy Holiday Home—­Wired garden, Home comforts,
    References”—­Church Family Newspaper.

* * * * *

From a notice of “Three Weeks":—­

    “The Queen of Croatia, one of those convenient operatic
    Balham royalties....”—­Liverpool Daily Post.

Won’t Tooting be jealous!

* * * * *

“To one who has been long enough away from the centre of things almost to forget what it is like, a walk along Pall Mall yesterday brought some curious reflections.  From the Circus to Hyde Park Corner not a single luxurious private motor-car or horse-drawn carriage was to be seen.  It was not the Pall Mall of old days.”—­Evening Paper.

No, it seems to have been much more like Piccadilly.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Troop-ship Officer.  “ANYTHING I CAN DO FOR YOU, SIR?”

Enterprising American.  “I GUESS SO.  I’M THE CINEMATOGRAPH OPERATOR WHO’S GOING TO TAKE A FILM THE FIRST TIME YOU’RE TORPEDOED, AND I’VE GOT A LETTER FROM YOUR FOLKS INSTRUCTING YOU TO GIVE ME EVERY FACILITY.”]

* * * * *

A SURPRISE PARTY.

“Five-and-thirty wounded Tommies coming to tea and one of them coming to his death, but he doesn’t know it,” moaned Emily, and waved a knife round her head.

I saw what had happened.  All this bun-baking and cake-making had been too much for my poor wife.  She had been living in the oven for a week.

“You’re overdone.  Lie down and try to get a little nap before they come,” I said soothingly.  “Everything’s ready.”

“Will he die without a sound, or will he gurgle?” said Emily, and brought the knife within an inch of my nose.

“No one is going to die at our tea-party, dear,” I said, and ducked.

“Not after swallowing that?” shrieked Emily, and lunged at me with the knife again.

I got it firmly by the handle this time, and I recognised Emily’s special cake-knife, an instrument wrought to perfection by long years of service, sharp as a razor down both sides, with a flexible tip that slithered round a basin and scooped up the last morsels of candied-peel.

But the flexible tip was gone.  I understood Emily’s distraught condition.  You can replace a diamond tiara; money won’t buy a twenty-year-old cake-knife.

“Try and bear it, dear,” I said.

Emily pointed to the table weighed down with Madeiras and rocks and almonds and sultanas and gingers.  “It’s inside one of them,” she said.

For the moment I failed to grasp her meaning.  She explained.  “I’ve made six dozen.  The knife was all right when I started; a little bent, nothing more.  It was when I was mixing the last that I noticed the tip was missing.”