First Clubwoman. "I noticed you talking to that old bore. Did she get on to her ailments?"
Second Clubwoman. "Yes. You might almost call it an organ recital."
A TALE OF HEADS.
After nine o'clock parade on that memorable morning the Sergeant-Major spoke to this effect: Though he, the Sergeant-Major, was new to the unit, he could and would make it plain that It Would Not Do. Had he taken up his duties in a dashed glee club or in a blanked choral society, he wanted to know? Though he had tried hard not to, he had been forced to admit that It was d——d disgraceful. He had never, he reflected aloud, seen anything like it during an active army existence that had provided many shocking sights. And he opined that there would be fatigues and C.B.s and court-martials and shootings-at-dawn if It continued. He was good, even for a Sergeant-Major.
The trouble was the hairs of the heads of the unit. And though he had rightly got the unit by the hairs which should have been short we felt it to be exceeding the limit on his part to refer to us as blanked musicians. Moreover, the band were most annoyed about it.
The Sergeant-Major paused to reflect, and to arrange matters with what he imagined was a sense of justice.
Though, he continued bitterly, we were more like a Spillikins Circle than an Army unit, he would, from sheer native kindness of heart, save us the imminent gibbet or the burial by a trench-digging party which awaited us. He would merely illustrate our manifold faults by taking the case of No. 3 in the rear rank.