Devolution and Exclusion, and the Servant Stamp, and Ninepence for Fourpence, and———"
"Yes," said Henry. "And all the Constitutional Lawbreakers and Conscientious Resisters and Passive Objectors will bob up again."
We looked at each other in dismay.
"And they call it," said Sinclair drearily, "a War of Liberty!"
THE LONELY SOLDIER.
Darling Delia,—I am in the most lacerating fix, and it all comes of my tender heart!
It gets an one's nerves saying goodbye to the boys, and sitting at home doing nothing oneself. For weeks I've been longing for something to do, and at last Lady Anne asked me to join the "Lonely Soldiers' Consolation League," and of course I jumped. The Lonely Soldiers send in their names, and they are put in a hat and handed round, and each member writes to her special Lonely once a week, and sends him a parcel once a month.
I haven't come to the parcel stage, but I sent a gushing letter. It was just after the last attack, when they'd been for days in the trenches, and their poor dear boots had stuck fast in the mud, and one was strung up to feeling that we'd love them, bless them, kiss them, when they came home again! I said so to Ted Johnson (that's my Lonely), quoting the refrain of the song in the actual words; I said he must never feel lonely or forgotten, for I remembered him, I thought of him, I looked forward to his return!
What else could one say? You write to them because they are lonely, and if they are lonely you can only cheer them by saying that you remember!
I spread myself upon Ted Johnson. And in due time his answer came. Prestwick brought it in with the tea-things (we have had no footman since the last Jeames enlisted), and I tore it open, and read it aloud to Ella, too eager to wait even until we were alone. Besides I was rather proud that Prestwick should see that I've been working too.
This was the letter:—
"Dear Miss,—I was glad to hear you missed me and was looking forward to my return. It's a long way to Eaton Gardens and the sweetest girl I know. We are having a deal of rain. With fond love from
Yours truly, Private Ted Johnson."
"How perfectly dinkie!" Ella said. "Isn't he sweet? Isn't he brave? Isn't he cheerful? Wouldn't you love to see him, Flora, and know him in real life?"
Then Prestwick spoke. He was standing with the tea-tray in his hand, staring across the room.
"Pardon me, Madam," he said, "you have seen him! Ted Johnson was our last footman!"
Oh, my Delia! before you correspond with a Lonely Soldier, be warned by me and make sure who he is! I have engaged to kiss Jeames on his return; he has sent me his fond love; and Father has promised to take him back!
Your distracted Flora.
THE HYMN OF EIGHT.
On the High C.
"The singing at sight, without search or parley, of merchant ships by submarine agency is a totally novel and unprecedented departure."—Western Morning News.
Usually, of course, they take a little practice before they give these vocal performances.
"Mr. Herbert Samuel, President of the Board of Trade, has appointed a Committee to consider the important question of employment for soldiers and sailors in the war."
Daily Telegraph.
We understand that Sir John French and Admiral Jellicoe are venturing to send suggestions and are willing themselves to find employment for quite a number.
THE MARTYR.
"And now," I said, when the nice question of food had been carefully settled, "what about drink?" and I called for the wine list. "What shall it be, red or white?" I ran my eye down the clarets.
"No," said my old friend sadly, "none for me. I am having to be very careful. Just water."
I looked at him in astonishment. I had known him for nearly two-and-twenty years and never in that time had he set up an attitude of hostility to any of the good things of the earth, solid or fluid. Not that I had over known him to overstep the bounds; but he had tasted and enjoyed, and flourished on his catholicity. And now to have declined upon water, or dry ginger ale, which was the joyless alternative that he subsequently proposed.
I looked at him in pity too, for I knew that he must be ill indeed for such a sacrifice to have been forced upon him.
"Yes," he said, "I am dieting myself. I find it necessary." He sighed as one sighs who accepts the distasteful inevitable.
"Well," I said, "I won't tempt you. That's not fair."
He looked at me almost as though he wished that I would, and that he might prove vulnerable; but I did not. I felt too sorry for him and his plight to put any obstacle in the way of recovery.
"Very well," I said and ordered the ginger ale, and we then settled down to talk. But all the while I was watching him sympathetically and remembering pleasant occasions on which I had been is guest in his own house and he had dived into the cellar and complacently emerged in the blessed company of ottles—bottles white and bottles red, and, even on special nights of ceremony, bottles bearing the light-brown label of The Widow. ("Butler's Analogy" was his description of himself on those occasions.) Such evenings I remembered, together with other convivial meetings at clubs and restaurants, here the juices of the grape had been carefully put to their predestined friendly uses; and now here he was, in the slang of the day, firmly and dolefully seated on the water wagon.
Poor chap! poor chap! I thought; what a time he has been having! and then—
"How long have you been a teetotaler?" I asked him, with a vista of dreary months in my mind.
"Oh, I only began it this morning," he said. "I had rather a heavy day yesterday."
