At the next shop, a fancy draper’s, I acted with cunning.  In the centre of the window, on a raised background of silver paper, was displayed a wreath of orange-blossom veiled with tulle.  I bought it.  The young ladies were hysterical.  “May I ask permission to put this little handbill in its place?” I said.  They appealed to the shopwalker.  “In the absence of the head of the firm I cannot see my way to accede to your request,” he said.  “At present he is on the Rhine.  On his demobilisation I will place the matter before him if you will leave the bill in my hands.”  I left it.

I skipped a gramophone emporium and a baby-linen shop and entered a fishmonger’s.  Here I adopted tactics of absolute candour.  “Look here,” I said, “I haven’t come to buy anything.  I don’t want any fish, flesh or red-herring, but I should be no end grateful if you would stick this bill up for me somewhere.”

“Certainly, Sir, as many as you like,” said the proprietor heartily.

Gleefully I gave him two.  One he stuck on a hook on top of a couple of ducks, and it flopped over face downwards on their breasts.  The other he laid in the middle of the marble counter, and the next moment his assistant came along and slapped an outsize halibut on it.

I went into a jeweller’s next and purchased a gold curb bangle (with padlock attached).

“You clever old thing,” said Maisie; “you’d never tell one from the other, would you?  Mine’s a tiny bit heavier, don’t you think?  I’ve just found it in the soap-dish.  I’ll change this for a filigree pendant.  All my life I’ve longed for a filigree pendant”

* * * * *

    “For 85 tons of blackberries, gathered last autumn,
    Northamptonshire elementary school children were paid
    L2,380, 3d. a lb.”—­Daily Paper.

The young profiteers!

* * * * *

“Splendid imitation almond paste for cakes can be made as follows:  Take four ounces of breadcrumbs, one small teaspoonful of almond essence, four ounces of soft white sugar, and one well-eaten egg to bind the mixture.”—­Answers.

The difficulty is to get the egg.

* * * * *

APRES LA GUERRE.

“On ne sait jamais le dessous des cartes,” as the perplexing dialect of the aborigines of this country would put it.  William and I, when we used to discuss after-the-war prospects o’ nights in the old days, were more or less resigned to a buckshee year or two of filling shell-holes up and pulling barbed wire down.  Instead of which we all go about the country taking in each others’ education.  No one, we gather, will be allowed to go home until he has taken his B.A. with honours.  And after that—­But it would be better to begin at the beginning.