“They laugh,” he said again.

“But they don’t know what you mean?”

“No.  But I’m funny.  That’s what you don’t seem to understand.  I’m so funny that everything I say and do makes them laugh.  It doesn’t, in fact, matter what I say.”

“Ah!” I replied, “I have you there!  In that case why don’t you say a few simpler and sweeter things?”

He seemed perplexed.

“Things,” I explained, “that don’t want quite so much knowledge of the seamy side of life?”

“Go on!” he said derisively.  “I haven’t got time to mug that up.  I’ve got my living to get.  You don’t suppose I invent my jokes, do you?  I collect them.  I’m on the Halls the rest of the year, and I hear them there.  There hasn’t been a new joke in a pantomime these twenty years.  But what you don’t seem to get into your head, mister, is the fact that I make them laugh.  Laugh.  I’m a scream, I tell you.”

“And laughter is all you want?” I asked.

“I must either make people laugh or get ‘the bird.’”

“But hasn’t it ever occurred to you,” I said, “that children in a theatre at Christmas time are entitled to have a little fun that is not wholly connected with sordid domestic affairs and pothouse commonness?”

“Never,” he said, and I believed him.

“Haven’t you children of your own?”

“Several.”

“And is that how you amuse them at home?”

“Of course not.  They’re too young.”

“How old are they?”

“From six to thirteen.”

“But that’s the age of the children who go to pantomimes,” I suggested.

“Well, it’s different in your own home,” he said.  “Besides,” he added, “it isn’t children I aim at in my jokes.  There’s other things for them:  the fairy ballets, the comic dog.”

“And what is the audience you aim at?” I asked.  “I suppose there is one definite figure you have in your mind’s eye?”

“Yes,” he said, “there is one.  The person in the audience that I always aim at is the silly servant-girl in the front row of the gallery.  That’s why I so often say ‘girls’ before I make a joke.  You’ve heard me, haven’t you?”

“Haven’t I?” I groaned.

* * * * *

THE GAME LICENCE.

It was yesterday afternoon, towards the close of the last beat of our annual cover shoot, that I perceived a fellow in a yellow waterproof popping up his head from time to time (at no little risk to his life) over a dyke some way behind the line of guns.  As soon as the beaters came out he advanced and introduced himself as an Excise Officer, asking “if this would be a convenient moment to examine the game licences of the party.”

It was not at all a convenient moment for Walter—­who hadn’t got one.  My thoughts flew at once to Walter in this crisis, for I knew he was bound to be had.  Walter never does have game licences, season tickets, adhesive labels, telegraph forms or things of that sort.  And as he had only returned from Canada two days before and this was the first time that he had been out, and further as he immediately disappeared and hid behind the hedge, I knew that my worst suspicions must be confirmed.  While the Excise Officer was taking down the names and addresses of the rest of the party I went after Walter.  He was sitting in the ditch with his head in his hands.