Ernest appeared slightly shame-faced. "Well, when those fatuous asses hauled me up for trespassing they left me in the charge of a gamekeeper while they 'phoned for the police. I induced the chap to let me go, and I had to square him with a tenner."
There was a long pause. Mother's mind seemed to be working at some abstruse calculation. Then she dried her eyes and looked up with the triumphant smile of the woman who gets the last word and wins her point.
"And so, Ernest," she said, "it did cost you five guineas a week to 'breathe the pure air of Heaven' after all."
"Sorry to hear your husband is laid up again, Mrs. Griggs."
"Yes. The trouble is he be an old man, and he will turn a deaf ear to the writin' on the wall."
PRAWLING'S THEORY.
(By a Student of Jargon.)