houses. Do you know that, next to the war trades, the most flourishing trade in all Europe to-day is the cheap jewelry trade? There are places in London's East End where every other shop or two has come to be a jeweller's shop, with the windows hung splendidly with all the shining trinkets that bring a shining light to women's eyes.
Mr. Black was home on leave a while ago. He stopped the first thing at the jeweller's round the corner in Hardwick Row and bought the gold chain and the locket Mrs. Black's wearing now with his picture in it. Do you know, it was so long since he'd given his wife a present, not since their courting days, that he'd forgotten how? He was a lot more awkward about it than he is about facing a fusillade of German gunfire. The perspiration just stood out on his forehead as he laid the little package on the kitchen table and said, "Mary, here's something I thought you might like."
There was a note in his voice by which she knew it wasn't bloaters from the fish-shop over the way. But she no more expected what it really was than she hoped for an angel to lean out of the windows of the sky and say, "Mary Black, here's a gold crown for you." The paper crackled in the silent room while she untied the string. The chain just shimmered once through her fingers. Her lips trembled. With a little cry, "O Jim!" she turned to lay her head in the old forgotten place on his shoulder. And there she sobbed out all the bitterness of seven years' married hardship and privation with the bear-
