When I got home that night our house seemed to be more handsomely garnished with icicles than any other house I had seen that day.

“Keep the home fires burning!” I said to my wife on entering.  “If need be, burn the banisters and the bills and my boot-trees and everything else beginning with a ‘b.’  Keep us thawed and unburst, or Fitz-Jones will feel he has scored a moral victory; he will strut cross-gartered, with yellow stockings, for the rest of his days.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Evangeline, “but Christabel and I” (Christabel is our general-in-command) “have been cosseting those pipes all day.  Been giving them glasses of hot water and dressing them up in all our clothes.  The bath-pipe is wearing my new furs and your pyjamas, and I’ve put your golf stockings on the geyser-pipe.  I expect they’ll all blow up.  Come and look at the hot-water cistern.”

The cistern looked dressy in Evangeline’s fur coat.  I added my silk hat to the geyser’s cosy costume and a pair of boots on the bath-taps.  But I was told not to be silly, so took them off again.

I suggested that the geyser should go to a fancy-dress ball as “The Winter of our Discontent,” but was again told not to be silly.

Two days elapsed.  The frost held.  Then something happened.  Fitz-Jones’s lady-help came round at 7.30 A.M. to borrow a drop of water, as they were frozen up.

We lent them several drops, and I breathed again, and continued to breathe, with snorts of derision.

Three days later the thaw came.

As I passed Fitz-Jones’s house I was grieved to hear a splashing sound.  A cascade of water was spouting from his bathroom window.  Fitz-Jones himself was running round and round the house like a madman, flourishing a water-key and trying to find the tap to the main.

I begged him to be calm, to control himself for his wife’s sake, for all our sakes.  I was most graceful and sympathetic about it.

But with the thaw Fitz-Jones had frozen again.

* * * * *

    “Civil Servant requires house.”—­Local Paper.

On the other hand, many houses just now require a civil servant.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Lady.  “YOU COME HERE BEGGING AND SAY YOU ARE NOT EXPECTED TO DO ANY MORE WORK.  I NEVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING.”

Tramp.  “THEN I’VE BEEN MISINFORMED, LIDY.  I CERTAINLY ’EARD THAT AFTER THE WAR ENGLAND WAS GOIN’ TER BE A BETTER PLACE FER THE LABOURING CLASSES.”]

* * * * *

PAST AND PRESENT.

(AFTER T. HOOD.)

  I remember, I remember. 
    The line where I was borne,
  The little platform where the train
    Came rushing in at morn;
  I used to take a little seat
    Upon the little train,
  But now before I get at it
    It rushes out again.