Chapter 2

Dorothy looked at us in surprise.

"You _are_ untidy," she said. "Whatever have you been doing?"

Christopher swallowed indignantly. "We were playing 'Hide and Seek' with you," he said.

"Oh, I stopped playing a long time ago," said Dorothy. "I'm reading now." She turned to our book again. Cecilia began to laugh.

"Come and have a wash, Christopher," I said in a strangled voice, and we moved off sheepishly.

* * * * *

"Aren't girls funny, Uncle Alan?" said Christopher.

"Christopher," I answered, "girls are the very----" Well, I told you at the beginning what we said to each other.

* * * * *

HIGH EXPLOSIVE ART.

[_The Morning Post_ has been conducting a vigorous campaign against singers who dispense with careful and prolonged training, and by their spasmodic and declamatory style suggest the title of "gaspers."]

Oh, all young folk of tuneful aims And fancy names like Joan and Jasper, I hope you'll read (and duly heed) _The Morning Post_ upon the "gasper."

'Tis not the "fag" that is turned down, Though that often proves a rasper Upon the larynx; here the noun Denotes the human, singing gasper.

Rome was not builded in a day, Nor even row-boats (_teste_ CLASPER); No more are voices which will stay, Unlike the organ of the gasper.

Attorneys need, before they start, Five years of training, but the grasper Who grudges one to vocal art Will end, as he began, a gasper.

Wherefore, ye men and maids who chant, Refrain at all costs from exasper- ating _The Morning Post_, which can't Abide the methods of the gasper.

* * * * *

Another Impending Apology.

"St. ---- Hall was filled last night with people, with Scottish song--and with fog. Perhaps nothing but the ---- Orpheus Choir could have done that."--_Scottish Paper._

* * * * *

"THE JAPANESE BUDGET.

Tokio, Tuesday.

The Cabinet has approved of the Budget, which totals 1,562 million yen (about 2s.)."

_Jersey Paper._

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN, please copy.

* * * * *

* * * * *

LITTLE BITS OF LONDON.

BOND STREET.

I find it very difficult to walk slowly down Bond Street as one ought to do; I always feel so guilty. Most of the people there look scornfully at me as if I belonged to Whitechapel, and the rest look suspiciously at me as if I belonged to Bond Street. My clothes are neither good enough nor bad enough. So I hurry through with the tense expression of a man who is merely using Bond Street as a thoroughfare, because it is the way to his dentist--as indeed in my case it is. But recently I _did_ saunter in the proper way, and I took a most thrilling inventory of the principal classes of shops, the results of which have now been tabulated by my statistical department.

For instance, do you know how many shops in the street sell things for ladies to wear (not including boots, jewellery or shoes)? No? Well, there are thirty-three. Not many, is it? But then there are twenty-one jewellers (including pearl shops) and eight boot and/or shoe shops; so that, with two sort of linen places, which may fairly be reckoned as female, the ladies' total is sixty-four. I only counted a hundred-and-fifty shops altogether. Of that total, nine are places where men can buy things to wear, and ten are places where they can buy things to smoke; I have charitably debited all the cigarette-shops to the men, even the ones where the cigarettes are tipped with rose-leaves and violet-petals. But even if I do that and give the men the two places where you can buy guns and throw in the one garden-seat shop, we are left with the result:--

Feminine Shops. Masculine Shops.

Dress 33 Dress 9 Jewellers 21 Tobacco 10 Boots and Shoes 8 Motors 9 Sort of Linen Places 2 Guns 2 Dog Bureau 1 Garden Seats 1 -- -- 65 31

From these figures a firm of Manchester actuaries has drawn the startling conclusion that Bond Street is more used by women than by men. It may be so. But a more interesting question is, how do all these duplicates manage to carry on, considering the very reasonable prices they charge? At one point there are three jewellers in a row, with another one opposite. Not far off there are three cigarette-shops together, madly defying each other with gold-tips and silver-tips, cork-tips and velvet-tips, rose-tips and lily-tips. There is only one book-shop, of course, but there are about nine picture-places. How do they all exist? It is mysterious.

Especially when you consider how much trouble they take to avoid attracting attention. There are still one or two window-dressers who lower the whole tone of the street by adhering to the gaudy-overcrowded style; but the majority, in a violent reaction from that, seem to have rushed to the wildest extremes of the simple-unobtrusive. They are delightful, I think, those reverent little windows with the chaste curtains and floors of polished walnut, in the middle of which reposes delicately a single toque, a single chocolate or a single pearl. Some of the picture-places are among the most modest. There is one window which suggests nothing but the obscure branch of a highly-decayed bank in the dimmest cathedral town. On the dingy screen which entirely fills the window is written simply in letters which time has almost erased, "---- ---- PICTURES." Nothing could be less enticing. Yet inside, I daresay, fortunes are made daily. I noticed no trace of this method at the Advertisers' Exhibition; they might give it a trial.

Now no doubt you fondly think that Bond Street is wholly devoted to luxuries; perhaps you have abandoned your dream of actually buying something in Bond Street? You are wrong. To begin with, there are about ten places where you can buy food, and, though there is no pub. now, there is a café (with a licence). There are two grocers and a poulterer. There is even a fish-shop--you didn't know that, did you? I am bound to say it seemed to have only the very largest fish, but they were obviously fish.

Anyone can go shopping in Bond Street. I knew a clergyman once who went in and asked for a back-stud. He was afterwards unfrocked for riotous living, but the stud was produced. You can buy a cauliflower in Bond Street--if you know the ropes. There is a shop which merely looks like a very beautiful florist's. There are potatoes in the window, it is true, but they are "hot-house" ones; inside there is no trace of a common vegetable. But if you ask facetiously for a cauliflower (as I did) the young lady will disappear below ground and actually return with a real cauliflower (_de luxe_, of course). I remember few more embarrassing episodes.

And if you like to inquire at the magnificent provision-merchant's he too will conjure up from the magic cellars boot-cream and metal-polish and all those vulgar groceries which make life possible. That is the secret of Bond Street. Beneath that glittering display of luxurious trivialities there are vast reserves of solid prosaic necessaries, only waiting to be asked for. A man could live exclusively on Bond Street. I don't know where you would buy your butchers' meat, but I have a proud fancy that, if you went in and said something to one of those sleek and sorrowful jewellers, he too would vanish underground and blandly return to you with a jewelled steak or a plush chop.

Many years ago, they tell me, there _was_ a butcher in Bond Street. Perhaps you dealt there. For my part I was not eating much meat in those days. But I can imagine his window--a perfect little grotto of jasper and onyx, with stalactites of pure gold, and in the middle, resting on a genuine block of Arctic ice, an exquisite beef-sausage. I wish he would come back.

It is difficult to realise that there is anything but shop-windows in Bond Street, but I like to think that, up there in those upper storeys which one never sees, there does dwell a self-contained little community to whom Bond Street is merely the village street, down which the housewives pass gossiping each morning to the greengrocer's or the fishmonger's and never purchase any pearls at all.

When the butcher comes back I think I shall join them.

A. P. H.

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

THE SAD CASE OF EL GRECO.

It was at the National Gallery, situated on the north side of Trafalgar Square, that I first made the acquaintance of one DOMENICO THEOTOCOPULI, a native of Crete, who--probably because his own people wanted him to be a stockbroker or something--set up as a painter in Spain, and was dubbed by the Dons "El Greco," as you might say "Scottie."

For years I have been rather tickled by his manner of depicting Popes and Saints as if they were reflected in elongating mirrors labelled, "Before Dining at the Toreador Restaurant." But until quite lately I hardly ever met anyone who had even noticed him, so I felt quite bucked on the old chap's account when I heard that he was considered one of the most distinguished of the Spanish painters, past and present, who are on view just now at Burlington House.

And what surprises me is not that old THEOTOCOPULI should attract so much attention in Piccadilly, but that such lots of people seem never to have known that he has been exhibiting himself all this time in Trafalgar Square.

I'm sure Mrs. Bletherwood didn't, for one, when she tackled me at the Chattertons' the other afternoon.

"Of course you've been to Burlington House?" she began, and she was in such a hurry to get first innings that she didn't give me time to say that I hadn't yet, but that I meant to go on my first free day that wasn't foggy.

"Don't you _love_ those quaint 'El Grecos'?" she went on. "He's quite a discovery, don't you think? My daughter Muriel, who hopes to get into the Slade School soon now, says she doesn't see how anybody _can_ see people differently from the way 'El Greco' saw people. And yet I don't know that I _quite_ like the idea of Muriel seeing _me_ like that, although she's _so_ clever...."

I could not help thinking that in Mrs. Bletherwood's case the "El Greco" treatment would be an admirable corrective to a certain lateral expansion.

"Besides," she continued in a confidential tone, "I've heard or read somewhere that there's just a doubt whether he distorted people on purpose or because there was something wrong with his eyes. If I thought it was astigmatism I would insist on taking Muriel to an oculist. I wonder what you think."

I raised my teacup suggestively.

Mrs. Bletherwood gasped. "You don't mean that he----"

"Like a fish," I said.

"Oh, how too disgraceful!" she exclaimed. "Fancy their having his pictures there at all. Such religious subjects too. I shall warn Muriel at once. I'm so thankful you told me...."

Have I done a wrong to Señor DOMENICO THEOTOCOPULI ("El Greco")? Perhaps; but I hope it has prevented Miss Muriel Bletherwood from doing him a greater.

* * * * *

"Sun Sets This Morning 8.8 Sun Sets To-night 3.56"

_Liverpool Paper_.

Just as in London last Wednesday.

* * * * *

* * * * *

CURES FOR INSOMNIA.

The following correspondence, clearly intended for the Editor of _The Daily Ailment_, has found its way into our letter-box. Another example of post-office inefficiency.

SIR,--As a regular reader of your valuable journal I am always deeply interested in the views of your readers as expressed in its columns. The recent letters on the cure of insomnia have interested me particularly. Although I have read your paper for many years, always eaten standard bread, study most diligently each morning my lesson on Government wobble and waste, grow sweet peas, keep fowls, take my holidays early (in Thanet) and read the feuilleton, in short perform all the duties of an enthusiastic loyal Englishman, I cannot sleep. Yesterday I decided to try the remedies suggested by your readers.

After inviting sleep with "a dish of boiled onions" I found that I must go to bed "without having eaten anything for five hours or so." This meant sitting up very late, but I found the time useful for taking "deep long breaths." Meanwhile I ran through the names of my friends alphabetically and emptied the feathers from my pillow, replacing them with hops. Sometimes a hop got mixed up in a "deep long breath," which was rather pleasant.

Every few minutes I left my friends' names to say to myself, "I am terribly sleepy," or "I am falling asleep;" this was wrong, as the boiled onions had not had nearly five hours. "Relaxing all my muscles" was rather awkward, as one hand was filling the pillow with hops and the other was "holding a wet sponge," which _would_ drip water on the sheets. Another difficulty was "wafting myself in an imaginary aeroplane" to bring about "a state of oblivion and coma," which I might perhaps have done more easily by putting the hops to another use.

I had to cut out the "recital of the Litany," partly because my friends' names had only got as far as George (Lloyd), and also because, being a Nonconformist, I don't know it. (I must learn it now the feuilleton is finishing.)

But the most annoying part of the business was to find that, after all this elaborate preparation for sleep, I was to "take a brisk walk for half-an-hour" (whatever the weather conditions). Even this did not work, for by that time the milkmen and newsboys were heralding the dawn and kept my brain too alert.

As a final effort, do you think you could produce a nightcap model of the Sandringham, or is it quite impossible for one who reads your paper to be anything but wideawake?

* * * * *

THE PERFECT PARTNER.

There are, my Mabel, men who vow The perfect wife is theirs Because she smoothes the ruffled brow And drives away their cares; While there are others hold the view That she is best who'll pay Some trivial attention to Her promise to obey.

Well, let each babble in his turn About that spouse of his; Not knowing you, how could they learn What true perfection is? Of all your sex you stand most high By far and very far Who mid your Christmas gifts can buy A smokeable cigar.

* * * * *

* * * * *

ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

SIR D. MACLEAN, MR. HOGGE, MR. G. LAMBERT, MR. G. R. THORNE, MR. ASQUITH, MR. ACLAND, GENERAL SEELY.]

_Monday, December 6th._--"Logic has never governed Ireland and never will," said Lord MIDLETON to-day. It was certainly conspicuous by its absence from a good many of the speeches made in Committee on the Government of Ireland Bill. Representatives of Southern Ireland have been clamouring for greater financial control, but they quite changed their tone when Clause 24, enabling the Irish Parliaments to impose a surtax upon residents in Ireland, came up for discussion. While professing the greatest confidence in the desire of their fellow-countrymen to treat them fairly, Lords DROGHEDA, SLIGO and WICKLOW agreed in thinking that this was too dangerous a power to entrust to them; it would breed absenteeism and drive capital out of the country.

Lord FINLAY, to whom as a Scotsman logic still makes appeal, was for the deletion of the whole clause. But the Irish Peers again objected; for they desired to preserve for the Irish Parliaments power to remit Imperial taxes, on the off-chance that some day it might be exercised. And they carried their point.

According to Lieut.-Colonel CROFT the pencils used by the British Post-Office are procured from the United States. As one who has suffered I can only hope that Anglo-American friendship, already somewhat strained by the bacon episode, will survive this revelation.

On the strength of a rumour that the seed of Irish peace had been planted in Downing Street, Mr. HOGGE promptly essayed to root it up in order to observe its progress towards fruition. The PRIME MINISTER, however, gave no encouragement to his well-intentioned efforts. Nor did he satisfy Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY'S curiosity as to whether Father O'FLANAGAN was "a Sinn Feiner on the bridge," beyond saying "that is what we want to find out."

_Tuesday, December 7th._--After a week's interval for reflection and study Lord LINCOLNSHIRE moved the rejection of the Agriculture Bill. Adapting an old joke of Lord SPENCER'S, made in "another place" a generation ago, he observed that this was no more an agricultural Bill than he himself was an agricultural labourer. He knows however how to call a spade a spade, if not something more picturesque, and he treated the measure and its authors to all the resources of a varied vocabulary. Possibly his brother peers, while enjoying his invective, thought that it had been a little bit overdone, for of the subsequent speakers only Lord HINDLIP announced his intention of voting against the Bill, the others being of opinion that parts of it were, not excellent perhaps, but at least tolerable.

In the Commons Viscount CURZON pressed upon the Government the desirability of licensing side-car combinations as taxi-cabs. The idea might, one feels, appeal to a Coalition Government but Sir JOHN BAIRD for the Home Office hinted at the existence of "serious objections."

Collectively the House has an infantile mind. It went into kinks of laughter over a question put by Dr. MURRAY regarding the "daily mail service" between one of his beloved islands and the Scottish mainland. The author of the joke--and small blame to him--quite failed to appreciate how funny he had been until his neighbours muttered in stage-whispers, "_Daily Mail!_" "_Daily Mail!_" Then a wan smile broke over his own features.

It has been stated in certain newspapers that Mr. CHAMBERLAIN has refused the Viceroyalty of India in consequence of the weak state of his health, and that for the same cause he is likely to vacate shortly the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. All I can say is that on the Treasury Bench he betrays no outward sign of this regrettable debility when dealing with critics of the Treasury. It is not easy to puncture the _æs triplex_ of Mr. BOTTOMLEY, but two words from Mr. CHAMBERLAIN did it this afternoon.

Sir ROBERT HORNE got a second reading for the Dyes Bill, a measure which he commended as being necessary to protect what is a key-industry both in peace and war. Dye-stuffs and poison-gas are, it seems, inextricably intermingled, and unless the Bill is passed we shall be able neither to dye ourselves nor to poison our enemies.

_Wednesday, December 8th._--The Agriculture Bill found one thoroughgoing supporter in the Duke of MARLBOROUGH, an "owner-occupier" so enamoured of Government control that he desires to see the whole of the ditches and hedges of England administered out of public funds; and a host of critics, friendly and otherwise. Lord CHAPLIN, though he thought the Bill one of the worst ever introduced, declined to vote against the Second Reading; Lord HARRIS believed that it would make very little difference one way or the other; Lord RIBBLESDALE, as an old-fashioned Free Trader, would have nothing to do with it; Lord LOVAT was of opinion that as an insurance for our food supply it would not compare with a Channel Tunnel; and Lord BUCKMASTER feared that it would rather strengthen than allay the demand for land nationalisation. The Government approached the division in some trepidation and were the more rejoiced when, in an unusually big House, the Second Reading was carried by 123 votes to 85.

But for the self-sacrifice of Mr. SPEAKER the Commons would have made themselves ridiculous this evening. Major ARCHER-SHEE wanted to have up a certain newspaper for breach of privilege in endeavouring to dictate to Members how they should vote. He obtained leave to move the adjournment and would doubtless have provided the peccant journal with a valuable free advertisement had not Mr. LOWTHER, reckless of his reputation for infallibility, suddenly remembered that motions for the adjournment were intended for criticising the Government and not for rebuking irresponsible outsiders. At his request the gallant Major withdrew his motion, and _The Daily_ ---- lost its advertisement.

Invigorated by this episode the House--or what was left of it--resumed the Report stage of the Ministry of Health Bill. The debate was remarkable for the brevity of some of the speeches. Sir ROWLAND BLADES set a good example to new Members by making a "maiden" effort in a minute and a half. But his record was easily beaten by Mr. SEXTON, who found ten seconds sufficient for expressing his opinion that the fact that the House was trying to legislate in the small hours was sufficient proof of the necessity of extending the laws of lunacy. "_Si argumentum requiris circumspice_," he might have said as he gazed upon the recumbent and yawning figures around him.

_Thursday, December 9th._--Mr. BONAR LAW enumerated a portentous list of measures which the House of Commons must pass if it wants to enjoy its Christmas holidays in peace. Lord HUGH CECIL wanted to know what was the use of passing "all these foolish little Bills." Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING had another solution for the difficulty and asked, "Why not pass them all _ad hoc_?" meaning, it is supposed, "_en bloc_."

Well might the PRIME MINISTER remark at Question-time that he welcomed the attacks of a certain section of the Press on the "Wastrels" because then he knew the Government was all right. Mr. GEORGE LAMBERT made a lively speech in support of his proposal to "ration" the Government to a sum of £808,000,000--the amount Mr. CHAMBERLAIN had said would suffice for a normal year. But his criticisms were too discursive to be really dangerous, and his condemnation of "sloppy Socialism" put up the backs of the Labour Party.

The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER reminded the House that when he talked of a "normal Budget" he had been careful to add, "but not this year, next year or the year after," which sounds suspiciously like the nursery formula, "This year, next year, sometime, NEVER."

Still the great majority of the Members were only too anxious to be convinced, and passed by a huge majority the "blanketing" amendment of Sir GODFREY COLLINS in favour of economy in the abstract. I don't know how this is to be squared with the PRIME MINISTER'S theory that it is the business of the Government "to see that the population is contented." That sounds a little like _panem et circenses_--a policy which did not work out cheaply.