A LITTLE FAVOUR.
Maisie was terribly upset when she lost her gold curb bangle (with padlock attached) between the hospital and the canteen. The first I knew of it was seeing a handbill offering two pounds' reward on our front gate, with the ink still damp, when I came home to lunch. There was a similar bill blowing down the road. My wife had some more under her arm and she pressed them on me. "Run round to the shops," she said; "get them put right in the middle of the windows where they'll catch everybody's eye."
The first shop I entered was a hosier's. Since drilling in the V.T.O. I have acquired rather a distinguished bearing. Shopkeepers invariably treat me with attention. The hosier hurried forward, obviously anticipating a princely order for tweeds at war prices. I hadn't the courage to buy nothing. I selected the nearest thing on the counter, a futurist necktie at two-and-six-three, and, as I was leaving the shop, turned back carelessly. "By the by, would you mind putting this bill in your window?" I said.
His lip curled. "This is a high-class business. We make it a rule—no bills," he said.
At the butcher's next door there were several customers. They all gave way to me. I made purchases worthy of my appearance and carriage, half an ox tail and some chitterlings. Then I proffered a handbill. The man in blue accepted it and, before I had opened my lips, returned it to me wrapped round the ox tail. I was too taken aback to explain. In fact, when he held out his hand, I mechanically gave him another bill for the chitterlings.
At the next shop, a fancy draper's, I acted with cunning. In the centre of the window, on a raised background of silver paper, was displayed a wreath of orange-blossom veiled with tulle. I bought it. The young ladies were hysterical. "May I ask permission to put this little handbill in its place?" I said. They appealed to the shopwalker. "In the absence of the head of the firm I cannot see my way to accede to your request," he said. "At present he is on the Rhine. On his demobilisation I will place the matter before him if you will leave the bill in my hands." I left it.
I skipped a gramophone emporium and a baby-linen shop and entered a fishmonger's. Here I adopted tactics of absolute candour. "Look here," I said, "I haven't come to buy anything. I don't want any fish, flesh or red-herring, but I should be no end grateful if you would stick this bill up for me somewhere."
"Certainly, Sir, as many as you like," said the proprietor heartily.
Gleefully I gave him two. One he stuck on a hook on top of a couple of ducks, and it flopped over face downwards on their breasts. The other he laid in the middle of the marble counter, and the next moment his assistant came along and slapped an outsize halibut on it.
I went into a jeweller's next and purchased a gold curb bangle (with padlock attached).
"You clever old thing," said Maisie; "you'd never tell one from the other, would you? Mine's a tiny bit heavier, don't you think? I've just found it in the soap-dish. I'll change this for a filigree pendant. All my life I've longed for a filigree pendant"
"For 85 tons of blackberries, gathered last autumn, Northamptonshire elementary school children were paid £2,380, 3d. a lb."—Daily Paper.
The young profiteers!
"Splendid imitation almond paste for cakes can be made as follows: Take four ounces of breadcrumbs, one small teaspoonful of almond essence, four ounces of soft white sugar, and one well-eaten egg to bind the mixture."—Answers.
The difficulty is to get the egg.
APRÈS LA GUERRE.
"On ne sait jamais le dessous des cartes," as the perplexing dialect of the aborigines of this country would put it. William and I, when we used to discuss after-the-war prospects o' nights in the old days, were more or less resigned to a buckshee year or two of filling shell-holes up and pulling barbed wire down. Instead of which we all go about the country taking in each others' education. No one, we gather, will be allowed to go home until he has taken his B.A. with honours. And after that—But it would be better to begin at the beginning.
It began within ten days of the signing of the armistice, assuming the shape of an official inquiry from Division, a five-barred document wherein somebody with a talent for confusing himself (and a great contempt for the Paper Controller) managed to ask every officer the same question in five different ways. They cancelled each other out after a little examination and left behind merely a desire to discover whether or not each officer had a job waiting for him on his return to civil life. William and I took the thing at a gallop, stuck down a succinct "Yes. Yes, No, No. Yes," subscribed our signatures and returned the documents—or so William proposed to do—"for your information and necessary inaction."
"They're getting deuced heavy about these jobs, aren't they?" observed William a day or two later. "The Old Man wants to see us all at orderly-room for a private interview—he's got to make a return showing whether his officers have got jobs waiting for them, if not, why not, and please indent at once to make good any deficiencies. Hullo, what's this?"
It happened to be William's mail for the day—one large official-looking envelope. It turned out to be a document from his old unit (he had entered the Army from an O.T.C.), headed, "Resettlement and Employment of ex-Officers: Preliminary Enquiry." It was a formidable catechism, ranging from inquiries as to whether William had a job ready for him to a request for a signed statement from his C.O. certifying that he was a sober, diligent and obliging lad and had generally given every satisfaction in his present situation. In case he hadn't a job or wanted another one there were convenient spaces in which to confess the whole of his past—whether he had a liking for animals or the Colonies, mechanical aptitude (if any), down to full list of birth-marks and next-of-kin. William thrust the thing hastily into the stove. But I observed that there was a cloud over him for the rest of the day.
However, we both of us satisfied the examiner at the orderly-room, though the renewed evidence of a determined conspiracy to find work for him left William a trifle more thoughtful than his wont. Shades of the prison-house began to close about our growing joy, "These 'ere jobs," remarked William, "are going to take a bit of dodging, dearie. Looks to me as though you might cop out for anything from a tram-driver to Lord Chief. Wish people wouldn't be so infernally obliging. And, anyway, what is this—an Army or a Labour Exchange?"
As the days wore on the strain became more and more intense. William's old school had contrived an association which begged to be allowed to do anything in the world for him except leave him for a single day in idleness. And what time the Army was not making inquiries about his own civil intentions and abilities it was insisting on his extracting the same information from the platoons. William grew haggard and morose. He began looking under his bed every night for prospective employers and took to sleeping with a loaded Webley under his pillow for fear of being kidnapped by a registry office. He slept in uneasy snatches, and when he did doze off was tormented by hideous nightmares.
In one of them he dreamt he was on leave and walking through the City. At every doorway he had to run the gauntlet of lithe and implacable managing directors, all ready to pounce on him, drag him within and chain him permanently to a stool—with the complete approval of the Army Council. In another he was appearing before a tribunal of employers as a conscientious objector to all forms of work.
The last straw was when the Brigadier caused it to be made known that if any officer was particularly unsettled about his future he might be granted a personal interview and it would be seen what could be done for him. William sat down with the air of one who has established a thumping bridgehead over his Rubicon and wrote to the Brigadier direct and as follows:—
"SIR,—I have the honour to hope that this finds you a good deal better than it leaves me at present. In case you should be in any uncertainty over your prospects on return to half-pay, I shall be happy to grant you a personal interview at my billet (Sheet 45; G 22a 3.7.) and see whether anything can be arranged to suit you. I may add that I have a number of excellent appointments on my books, from knife-boy to traveller to a firm of mineral water manufacturers. For my own part my immediate future is firmly settled, thank you. For at least three months after my discharge from the Army I have no intention of taking up any form of work.
"I have the honour to be, Sir,
"YOUR OTHERWISE OBEDIENT SERVANT, ETC."
The court-martial was held last Thursday and sentence will be promulgated any day now. Medical evidence certified William as sane enough to understand the nature of his offence, but as the War is over it is unlikely that he will be shot at dawn. William himself is confident that he will be cashiered, a sentence which carries with it automatic and permanent exclusion from all appointments under the Crown. "That makes a tidy gap in the wire," says William hopefully. "They won't even be able to make a postman of me. With a bit of luck I'll dodge the unofficial jobs—I get that holiday after all, old bean."
"HUNTING. THE DANGER OF KICKING HORSES."—Times.
Generally the shoe is on the other foot.
"The Falkirk iron fitters, by an overwhelming majority, have opposed the forty-hour week and have agreed to a forty-four hour week."—Provincial Paper.
Bravo, Falkirk!
"The announcement of the augmentation of the British beet in the Mediterranean appeared exclusively in the 'Sunday Express.'"—Daily Express.
It doesn't seem anything to boast about.
"WANTED.—On a farm, two capable European young or middle-aged girls."—South African Paper.
There are lots of girls answering this description, but the difficulty is that most of them are too shy to admit it.
"M. Clemenceau ... speaks English with rare perfection, having spent years in the United States."—Daily Paper.
"M. Clemenceau, speaking in excellent English, said 'Yes.'"—Sunday Paper.
What he really said, of course, was "Yep."