"You're quite old and bald. I can't think why I didn't notice it before."
"Well, you wouldn't when I was a tortoise," said Udo pleasantly. "As tortoises go I was really quite a youngster. Besides, anyhow one never notices baldness in a tortoise."
"I think," said Beauty, weighing her words carefully, "I think you've gone off a good deal in looks in the last day or two."
. . . . . . .
Charming was home in time for dinner; and next morning he was more popular than ever (outside his family) as he rode through the streets of the city. But Blunderbus lay dead in his castle. You and I know that he was killed by the magic sword; yet somehow a strange legend grew up around his death. And ever afterwards in that country, when one man told his neighbour a more than ordinarily humorous anecdote, the latter would cry, in between the gusts of merriment, "Don't! You'll make me die of laughter!" And then he would pull himself together, and add with a sigh—"Like Blunderbus."
AN ODD LOT
THE COMING OF THE CROCUS
"IT'S a bootiful day again, Sir," said my gardener, James, looking in at the study window.
"Bootiful, James, bootiful," I said, as I went on with my work.
"You might almost say as spring was here at last, like."