Chapter 2

From the branch this persistent and pleasing bird shortly removed itself to the window-sill of one of the bedrooms, and into this room, when breakfast was over, the children trooped. The dove was pecking eagerly at the window-pane. "Let's open the window for it," said one of the girls, "and see what happens." Very gently, then, the window was opened, and what immediately happened was that, without the least sign of alarm, nay rather with the air of one repeating a customary action, the dove walked in, took a short flight, and settled on the toilet-table. There it caught sight of its soft grey reflection in the looking-glass and at once began to parade up and down before it, swelling itself out and bobbing its head in evident admiration of the beautiful being so fortunately offered to its view. Soon it attempted to approach this vision, but was surprised to find itself foiled by the cold impermeable surface of the glass. Puzzled, but not, I think, definitely hopeless--it performs the same antics in one or other of the bedrooms every day--it left the toilet-table, circled round the room and perched confidingly on the shoulder of one of the little girls who were admiring it, and began once more to coo in a very ecstasy of enjoyment.

Later on, food was provided for it, which it pecked up without the least shyness. Since then it has established itself on a very firm clawing, if I may use the term, as a necessary inmate of the house. Fluttering through the passages it follows the maids from room to room in the morning and shows the most lively interest in their work while beds are being made or tables dusted. It has the most perfect trustfulness, not merely allowing itself to be handled, but coming to perch on a wrist or shoulder as if it had belonged there from, time immemorial. It really is a pretty thing to have about the house, an embodiment of gentleness and kindness, and, so far as a mere human being can judge, of an almost dog-like gratitude and affection. I have seen a bullfinch swell up in a passionate agitation of love when from its cage it beheld its dear mistress enter the room, but it had never occurred to me before this to attribute such a feeling to a dove. I ought, I suppose, to have known better, as I now do. At this very moment it is cooing away like mad at its declaration of undying love from its favourite haunt on the mantelpiece of one of the bedrooms.

But it has another utterance which it employs at rare intervals. This is a sort of high-pitched laugh thoroughly unsuited to its softness, a most cynical and derisive sound which in so kind a beak seems to have neither meaning nor purpose. But I overlook its rare laugh in consideration of the cooing with which it blesses us and the general friendship which it has vowed to this house.

* * * * *

RECALLED.

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE BOBBERY PACK.

Andy Hartigan's dead and gone Over the hills and further yet, But he drank good port and his red face shone Like a cider apple of Somerset.

Ten strange couples o' hounds he had (Gaunt old brutes that had hunted fox Back in the days when NOAH was a lad), Touched in the bellows and gone at the hocks--

Hounds he'd stole from a Harrier pack, Hounds he'd borrowed an' begged an' found, Grey an' yellow an' tan an' black, Every conceivable kind o' hound.

He called them "harriers," and a few _Were_ harriers--back when the world began-- But they weren't particular where they drew An' they weren't particular what they ran.

I mind him once of a bygone morn Ruddy an' round on his flea-bit horse, Twangin' a note on his battered horn An' cappin' them into the Frenchman gorse.

They pushed a brown hare out of her form An' swung on her line with a crash of tongues; But a vixen crossed an' her scent was warm, So they ran her, screechin' to burst their lungs.

They ran her into my lord's demesne, Where my lady's fallows were grazing free; They picked a stag and followed again, Singing like souls in ecstasy.

They chased the stag up over the ridge With lolling tongues an' with heaving flanks; They lost him down by the Cluddlah bridge, But killed an otter on Cluddlah's banks.

They had no shape an' they had no style; Their manners were bad an' their morals slack; They were noisy, but wonderful versatile, Andy Hartigan's bobbery pack.

* * * * *

High (Explosive) Finance.

"The issuing of premium bombs, whilst not, strictly speaking, a lottery or gamble, would give such people what they ask for, and that is a chance to get something unusual and tempting."

_Evening Paper._

Unusual, certainly; but tempting?

* * * * *

A War-Menu.

"GIRLS experienced Wanted to feed on Wharfdale machines."

_Nottingham Evening Post._

* * * * *

"BROADWOODWIDGER.--A new pipe organ has been installed at the parish church. A recital was given by the Rev. C. B. Walters, of Stokeclimsland, while a sermon was preached by the Rev. Canon Lewis, of Launceston."--_Provincial Paper._

The Broadwoodwidger example deserves imitation. Some sermons would be much more tolerable if they had a musical accompaniment.

* * * * *

"A mere automatic raising of the Income Tax strikes indiscriminately at the just and the unjust; it is just as likely to cripple the man who is supporting and educating a large family sybarite."

_Evening Paper._

And a very good thing too. For ourselves, we have always discouraged the growth of these bulky profligates in the domestic circle.

* * * * *

* * * * *

YELLOW PRESSURE.

"Rather a funny thing happened the other day," she remarked.

"Yes?" I replied languidly.

"About you."

"Oh!" I said with animation. "Do tell me."

"It was at lunch," she explained, "at Duke's. The people at the next table were talking about you. I couldn't help hearing a little. A man there said he had met you in Shanghai."

"Not really!" I exclaimed.

"Yes. He met you in Shanghai."

"That's frightfully interesting," I said. "What did he say about me?"

"That's what I couldn't hear," she replied. "You see I had to pay some attention to my own crowd. I only caught the word 'delightful.'"

Ever since she told me this. I have been turning it over in my mind; and it is particularly vexing not to know more. "Delightful" can be such jargon and mean nothing--or, at any rate, nothing more than amiability. Still, that is something, for one is not always amiable, even when meeting strangers. On the other hand it might be, from this man, the highest praise.

The whole thing naturally leads to thought, because I have never been farther east than Athens in my life.

Yet here is a man who met me in Shanghai. What does it mean? Can we possibly visit other cities in our sleep? Has each of us an _alter ego_, who can really behave, elsewhere?

Whether we have or not, I know that this information about my Shanghai double is going to be a great nuisance to me. It is going to change my character. In fact it has already begun to do so. Let me give you an example.

Only yesterday I was about to be very angry with a telegraph boy who brought back a telegram I had despatched about two hours earlier, saying that it could not be delivered because it was insufficiently addressed. Obviously it was not the boy's fault, for he belonged to our country post-office and the telegram had been sent to London and was returned from there; and yet I started to abuse that boy as though he were not only the POSTMASTER-GENERAL himself but the inventor of red-tape into the bargain. And all for a piece of carelessness of my own.

And then suddenly I remembered Shanghai and how delightful I was there. And I shut up instantly and apologised and rewrote the message and gave the boy a shilling for himself. If one could be delightful in Shanghai one must be delightful at home too.

And so it is going to be. There is very little fun for me in the future, and all because of that nice-mannered man in Shanghai whom I must not disgrace. For it would be horrible if one day a lady told him that she had overheard someone who had met him in London and found him to be a bear.

* * * * *

HERRICK TO JULIA.

(_War Edition_).

When as in silks my Julia goes Then, then (methinks) how wanton shows That efflorescence of her clothes.

But when I cast mine eyes and see Her drest for decent industry, Oh, how that plainness taketh me!

* * * * *

FOR TRAITORS.

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

_Tuesday, March 28th._--Sir EDWARD CARSON was back on the Front Opposition Bench to-day, so much the better for his recent rest-cure that he is credited with the desire to prescribe similar treatment for other jaded politicians. Three of the potential patients--the PRIME MINISTER, the FOREIGN SECRETARY and the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS--have anticipated his kindly suggestion by going for a little trip on the Seine, and are making arrangements with their Continental friends for another on the Spree at a later date.

Before his departure Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, ever thoughtful for the welfare of others, arranged with the Military authorities to give a change of scene to six members of the Clyde Workers' Committee, who have been recently over-straining their vocal chords. This was the impression I got from Dr. ADDISON, who, like his great namesake, is a master of the bland style; but Sir EDWARD CARSON thrust aside official euphemism and bluntly inquired whether these men were not in fact assisting the KING'S enemies, and ought not to be indicted for high treason.

The suppression of a number of _Sinn Fein_ papers in Ireland stimulated Mr. GINNELL to the concoction of a Question about as long as a leading article. To ensure a reply he addressed it simultaneously to the UNDER SECRETARY FOR WAR and the CHIEF SECRETARY FOR IRELAND. In spite of this precaution he was disappointed, for, owing to the storm, Mr. BIRRELL had not received the necessary information from Ireland, while Mr. TENNANT, no doubt for the same reason, had not even received the Question. Mr. GINNELL is now convinced that the official conspiracy against him has been joined by the Clerk of the Weather.

I shall hardly be surprised if the next time I walk down Whitehall I find sandwichmen out with their boards inscribed--

Westminster Aerodrome. Flying every Tuesday. Billing Breaks all Records.

The new Member for East Herts has displayed unprecedented dexterity in catching the SPEAKER'S eye. In three weeks he has already spoken more columns of _Hansard_ than many Members fill during a long Parliamentary career. His speech to-day consisted almost entirely of a catalogue of fatal accidents to aviators, due, he declared, to the faulty engines and machines supplied to them by the Government--"though within twenty miles of here we have a far better machine than the _Fokker_."

Previous to this we had listened to a bright and diverting dialogue between Mr. DUDLEY WARD, representing the Anti-Aircraft Service, and Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS, briefed by the Municipal authorities, on the question of what happened at Ramsgate during the last raid. As they differed _in toto_ on every detail the House was not much the wiser for the discussion, but it was consoled by Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS' remark that "if the MAYOR and TOWN CLERK have lied to me no one will be more pleased than myself."

Members were much more impressed by the obvious sincerity and occasional eloquence of the appeal on behalf of the East Coast towns made by Sir A. GELDER. His indignation at the trick played on one place by the Military authorities, who tried to allay public anxiety by mounting a dummy gun, was shared by the House.

Mr. TENNANT did not attempt to deny or palliate this imposture, but he made a fairly adequate reply to other counts of the indictment, and promised a judicial inquiry into the casualties enumerated by Mr. BILLING. The revelation that he himself has a son in the Flying Corps was perhaps the most effective point in a speech which did not wholly remove the impression that the Government has its head in the air rather than its heart.

_Wednesday, March 29th._--There are more ways than one of getting into the House of Commons. Mr. PERCY HARRIS, the new Member for the Market Harborough division, who took his seat to-day, arrived by the old-fashioned route of a contested election. He was just about to shake hands with the SPEAKER when a khaki-clad stranger took a short cut from the Gallery and reached the floor _per saltum_. Not only so, but before he could be arrested this Messenger from Mars succeeded in delivering his maiden speech, to the effect that British soldiers' heads should be protected against shrapnel-fire. The SERJEANT-AT-ARMS, who had had a narrow escape, goes further, holding the view that his own head should be protected from acrobatic British soldiers.

To-day Mr. LONG had the difficult task of convincing the House that the married men had no grievance, and that the Government were doing their best to remove it. Only a man who has fought with bulls in Ireland could hope to tackle such a paradox. Mr. LONG, having enjoyed that experience, was fairly successful.

Sir EDWARD CARSON, who had been expected by some people to initiate a raging "Down-the-Government" agitation, was comparatively mild, and, admitting that his late colleagues had done something, chiefly blamed them for not having done it earlier. Still he made it plain that in his view compulsion all round was inevitable if Prussianism was to be crushed. Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH agreed with him. The Government ought not to bargain with the public; it ought to give them a clear and definite command. Such sentiments, proceeding from one who still claimed to belong to the Liberal Party, shocked Sir WILLIAM BYLES. Maintaining that those who had voted against the Military Service Bill were the truest friends of the PRIME MINISTER, he promised again to give him his invaluable support "if he would only lead us to our accustomed pasture." There is no justification, however, for the theory that the worthy knight is a candidate for the Order of the Thistle.

_Thursday, March 30th._--In the Lords to-day Viscount TEMPLETOWN moved that London should be declared a prohibited area, with a view to removing the eight or nine thousand Germans still carrying on business there. His argument was a little difficult to follow, for it included a complaint that in Eastbourne, which is a prohibited area, a number of aliens are residing in comfort and affluence. The Marquis of LANSDOWNE, usually so logical, on this occasion answered inconsequence by inconsequence. In one breath he asserted that to declare the whole of the Metropolis a prohibited area would throw too much work on the police; and in the next that it would have the effect of driving away large numbers of aliens to places not so well policed as London is. Lord BERESFORD caught the infection. In the course of a long question designed to clear General TOWNSHEND of the responsibility for the advance upon Bagdad, he remarked with startling irrelevance that if his (Lord BERESFORD's) advice had been taken by the PRIME MINISTER the _Lusitania_ would still be afloat and we should have lost no battleships in the Dardanelles. He did not appear to attach undue importance to this claim, and Lord ISLINGTON, who replied for the Government, did not think it necessary to make any reference to it, but contented himself with stating that the Bagdad advance was authorised on the advice of General NIXON and the Indian Government, and professing official ignorance of any representations on the part of General TOWNSHEND.

In the Commons the trouble on the Clyde was the _pièce de résistance_. At Question time Mr. LLOYD GEORGE, fresh from the Paris Conference, had to deal with a number of inquiries put by the little group of Scottish malcontents whose notion of patriotism is to embarrass the Government on each and every occasion. Mr. HOGGE wanted to know when the MINISTER OF MUNITIONS was going to give the other side of the case--"the German side," as an interrupter pertinently put it; and Mr. PRINGLE intimated that a settlement could have been reached but for the unreasonableness of the Government.

This gave Dr. ADDISON, usually the mildest-mannered man that ever lanced a gumboil, an opportunity of administering to big accuser a much-needed lesson in deportment. The hon. Member had first forced himself, without invitation, into a private conversation in the Minister's room, and had then given a totally misleading account of what took place. He had made himself the spokesman of a body which had displayed "a treacherous disregard of the highest national interests."

Mr. PRINGLE was as much surprised as if he had been bitten by a rabbit, and wound up an unconvincing defence of himself with the remark that he would rather keep silence than say anything to exacerbate feeling. It is a pity that his friend Mr. HOGGE did not imitate this wise if rather tardy reticence. He gave Mr. LLOYD GEORGE the lie when he was describing how the disputes had interfered with the supply of guns urgently needed by the Army, and provoked the retort that, instead of encouraging the strikers by unfounded suggestions, he would be better employed if "with what credit is left to him" he went down to the Clyde and tried to get them to work.

* * * * *

* * * * *

A LETTER TO THE FRONT.

"Kin yer write a letter?"

"More or less," I said. I did not rate myself with Madame DE STAËL nor with EDWARD FITZGERALD, but I forebore to mention these names because I thought that they would not be familiar to my questioner. If you happen to know Paradise Rents, Fulham, you will realise that neither Madame DE STAËL, nor FITZGERALD is much read there. Moreover, the type that addressed me had not the aspect of a literary man.

He was a man of some seven years, maybe, in company with a younger man, perhaps of five. He was hatless, coatless, waistcoatless, but he had a pair of trousers, short in the leg, precariously held by one brace. That is the fashion in Paradise Rents. I had come upon these two young men about Fulham as they were staring with absorbed interest into the undertaker's shop advantageously situated for custom at the corner of the Rents and the main street. Certainly it was a pleasant window. Besides the legends and texts, the artificial wreaths and the pictures of tombs and tombstones, there was a number of model coffins in miniature. It was these that had fascinated the attention of the two young men.

"I should like one o' them to ply with," said the elder covetously.

"What would yer do with it, Bill?" the younger asked.

"I'd put the old KAYSER in it, along wi' Farver."

It is rude to laugh at other people's conversation, particularly if you have not been introduced to them, but I caught myself in an audible chuckle over this fine blend of patriotic and filial sentiment. Then I pulled myself but not in time; I had been detected.

If you wish to know what it is to be stared at, you should interrupt, as I had, a conversation between two young men of about this age in Fulham or elsewhere. They stared in unison and in silence until the tension became unbearable, and one of them, the elder, whose name was Bill, relieved it with the above quest on, "Kin yer write a letter?"

Perhaps my answer was a little modest. He regarded me doubtfully, then asked--

"'Ow soon kin yer write a letter?"

"You mean, how long does it take me to write a letter?"

He nodded his head vehemently.

"Well," I began, "it rather depends, you know, on what there is to say." I saw dissatisfaction cloud his face, and hastened to add, "Oh, well, about ten minutes."

At that his expression cleared to astonishment. Passing that emotion, it went to incredulity. It was a beautifully legible face, though everything but clean. He made up his mind.

"Will yer come," he asked, "and write a letter for my granmother?"

We were on the heels of adventure now; no one could say what new country this might lead to.

"Where does she live?" I asked.

"Just round the corner, two doors from my Great-aunt Maria's," he said, astonished that I should not know,

"Lead on," I said, concealing my ignorance of the residence of great-aunt Maria.

He took me by the hand, which I could not in courtesy decline, and led me down Paradise Rents.

As a rule, in Paradise Rents, front doors stand open to the street, but the door of Number 5, the abode of Bill's grandmother, was shut. On tip-toe and with a strenuous effort Bill reached the latch. The door opened and Bill shouted through it, by way of introduction:--

"She says she kin write a letter in ten minutes."

The person addressed, whom I understood to be the grandmother, was engaged in scrubbing with a duster a deal table already clean enough to make Bill's face much ashamed of itself. She was a large heavy old woman, with a round colourless visage that suggested the full moon by daylight, and wispy grey locks like a nimbus about it.

"Lor bless the child, Mum!" she exclaimed. "Bill, whatever d'yer mean by it?"

"Says she kin write a letter in ten minutes," Bill repeated, with the emphasis of grave doubt on the "says."

"Bless the child, Mum! I don't know whatever 'e's been saying. It's truth as I did say as I wished I 'ad someone as could write a letter for me to my son Frank, it being 'is birthday Tuesday and 'im out at the Front. But there, it's not to say, as I can't write a letter myself if I'm so minded, but I'm no great scholard and it do take me a long time to finish--each day a word or two. About a week it take me to write a letter, such a letter as I'd wish to write to Frank out at the Front, for 'is birthday, to cheer 'im up."

"Frank's Bill's father, I suppose?" I said, by way of filling an asthmatic pause.

"Lor bless yer, no, Mum. Bill's father wouldn't never go into no more danger than what 'e'd find at the Red Lion. Married my pore daughter 'e did, as died--a mercy for 'er, pore thing! That's 'ow it is Bill's living along o' me."

"I see," I said. "Well, now--about the letter?"