Small boy (much interested in Shopman's reason for high price of eggs). "But, mummy, how do the hens know we're at war with Germany?
ANOTHER DOG OF WAR.
Dear Mr. Punch,―When my master got the mail a month old, he opened Punch first (as he always does), and when he saw the letter from the "Very Sad Dog," he sat me on the ward-room table and read it out to me. I wept till the tears rolled down my face, because of course every dog should be with his master at the Front. I am a very proud dog, and my Airedale father and Irish Terrier mother would yelp for joy if they know, because of course I insisted on going to the Front with Master. When we mobilised, Master took me off on a ridey-walk to the stables, and he stayed a long time stroking his polo ponies, until I heard him say, "Good-bye, my darlings." Then I began to suspect something.
Concealing the jealous pangs I always feel when he is near these beasts, I hurried back to the depot-ship and found his servant packing! I have been had that way once before. Never again. That evening I went on board our (master calls it his) torpedo boat destroyer and got into a locker in the ward-room pantry. The locker is two feet square and I weigh forty-five pounds, but I managed it. A ham was in the next locker, and I never budged an inch, although I have a passion for ham. At midnight I heard Master come on board, reading out from a signal pad about hostilities and shouting Hoorah! He hailed the quartermaster and said something about having lost his d———d dog (that's me) and wanting the mess to look after me. I quivered with anxiety.
Presently we cast off, and when I know by the fact of the ham bumping against my partition that we were going at full speed I climbed on deck. I always rather funk the ordeal of meeting Master on these occasions, but the result is always the same: I stay. I did the usual performance of wagging my tail, then squirming on the deck and trying to look as if I'd got there by accident, etc., until I was forgiven, after having been called a stowaway and a possible German spy. Master's naval vocabulary is so extensive that if I were to repeat what he said when we met it would resemble one of those despatches that the ——— Censor has to handle.
Living in a T.B.D. I don't get much exercise except when Master takes me over to see his friends in the other boats. A cat lives in one and a rabbit in the other. I come back feeling pleasantly tired.
I have to put up with a good deal of neglect nowadays. In the old days Master was always talking to me in a special language of our own, such as "Yarafattog" (which means you are a fat dog), but now he spends most of his time poring over charts and muttering to himself strange German names. I am sick of being at sea all day (and, between ourselves, have been several times) and am anxiously waiting for another splendid hunt like the one we had off Heligoland or some such place, though Master refers to it as the Helofafight. When the guns went off I growled all the time and the hair on my back stuck out so stiff that it took Master's servant a good week's combing and brushing to get it smooth again.
I am very useful on board. To mention only one instance, at lunch-time we were rolling about 50° each way & and the corned beef came off the table. I actually succeeded in catching it before it fell on to the deck, and saved it from being rendered uneatable by the salt water on the deck. Master came down at that moment and called me a Hun (which is German for hound); but when he saw that the empty plates (which aren't eatable) had also fallen off the table, he apologised and said I was a British dog all right.
I sleep in the bunk with Master (we sometimes got a good four hours' sleep every third or fourth day) and then I dream I am back again in the old park at home chasing the rabbits. I had to apologise to Master the other night, as after a very fine run and just as I was about to catch a succulent rabbit I woke up to find I had nearly
