We wish sometimes that our conditions were changed as easily as our signs.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Dugal. “I DOOT, TAMMAS, THERE’S SOME INFORMEESHUN THAT MAN LLOYD GEORGE HAS GOT THAT WE HAVENA GOT.”]

* * * * *

ANOTHER IMPENDING APOLOGY.

    “The Lord Provost will preside over the meeting at which Mr.
    Churchill will speak in Dundee this afternoon.

    Many thousands of people are leaving Dundee for their annual
    holiday.”—­Manchester Daily Dispatch.

* * * * *

“Mr. Alderman Domoney, in remanding at the Guildhall to-day two boys charged with theft, said he always liked to deal leniently with boys so young and to give the ma fresh start in life.”—­Evening Paper.

Not a word about the pa, you observe; yet we daresay he was equally responsible.

* * * * *

From the Orders of a Battalion in France:—­

    “The undermentioned N.C.O.’s and men will parade at 10.30
    a.m., bringing with them their gas-helmets and the unexpired
    portion of their rations.”

It is surmised that this refers to the cheese-issue.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Basil.  “MUMMY, AREN’T WE EXCEEDING THE SPEED RATION?”]

* * * * *

BULLINGTON.

  It was in the high midsummer and the sun was shining strong,
  And the lane was rather flinty and the lane was rather long,
  When, up and down the gentle hills beside the stripling Test,
  I chanced to come to Bullington and stayed a while to rest.

  It was drowned in peace and quiet, as the river reeds were drowned
  In the water clear as crystal, flowing by with scarce a sound;
  And the air was like a posy with the sweet haymaking smells,
  And the Roses and Sweet-Williams and Canterbury Bells.

  Far away as some strange planet seemed the old world’s dust and din,
  And the trout in sun-warmed shallows hardly seemed to stir a fin,
  And there’s never a clock to tell you how the hurrying world goes on
  In the little ivied steeple down in drowsy Bullington.

  Small and sleepy there it nestled, seeming far from hastening Time,
  As a teeny-tiny village in some quaint old nursery rhyme,
  And a teeny-tiny river by a teeny-tiny weir
  Sang a teeny-tiny ditty that I stayed a while to hear:—­

  “Oh the stream runs to the river and the river to the sea;
  But the reedy banks of Bullington are good enough for me;
  Oh the road runs to the highway and the highway o’er the down,
  But it’s just as good in Bullington as mighty London town.”

  Then high above an aeroplane in humming flight went by,
  With the droning of its engines filling all the cloudless sky;
  And like the booming of a knell across that perfect day
  There came the guns’ dull thunder from the ranges far away.