"An audit and scrutiny showed that we were both 537, and although Laxey held a distinct advantage in position I decided on a strenuous effort to halve the game. I took a firm stance and the hockey stick and let drive for the hole with a tremendous pickaxe stroke. Instantly there was a blinding flash and an explosion, and, when we had finished picking sand out of our ears and eyes and allayed the excitement of the Chinks, we discovered my ball comfortably nestling in the crump-hole.
"'If assistance with derelict Mills bombs is allowed,' said Laxey, 'we've halved.'
"'On the contrary,' I replied, 'as your ball is apparently missing I've won.'
"And, if you believe me, we couldn't find Laxey's ball anywhere, though we had seen it but a minute or two before. So I claimed the ten francs; but I didn't mention to Laxey that the following morning I was passing a group of the coolies and saw them with an object that looked suspiciously like Laxey's ball, hammering it with a stick and trying to make it say Bang!"
Constable (to dreamy little foreigner). "I don't know where you were born, Tich, but I'll give odds you'll die in England."
"Wanted, Second Housemaid of three, Scotchwoman preferred; willing to wait on table if required; comfortable situation."—Daily Paper.
Possibly; but we always prefer our servants to do their waiting on the floor.