*

"I wish the Government would tell _me_ what I could do for them."

* * * * *

"Oh, another three years."

* * * * *

"What puzzles me is--Where is the paper shortage?"

* * * * *

"We keep a gramophone in the basement now."

* * * * *

"No one is more willing than I am to do something."

* * * * *

"It's the children's festival--that's what I always say."

* * * * *

HERBS OF GRACE.

IX.

PENNYROYAL.--A CAROL.

_"Far away in Sicily!"--
A home-come sailor sang this rhyme,
Deep in an ingle, mug on knee,
At Christmas time._

In Sicily, as I was told,
The children take them Pennyroyal,
The same as lurks on hill and wold
In Cotsall soil.

The Pennyroyal of grace divine
In little cradles they do weave--
Little cradles therewith they line
On Christmas Eve.

And there, as midnight bells awake
The Day of Birth, as they do tell,
All into bud the small plants break
With sweetest smell.

All into bud that very hour;
And pure and clean, as they do say,
The Pennyroyal's full in flower
On Christmas Day.

_Far away in Sicily!--
Hark, the Christmas bells do chime!
So blossom love in thee and me
This Christmas time!_

W.B.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Lady_ (_to uniformed friend_). "I SHOULDN'T A BIT
MIND WEARING UNIFORM IF ONLY ONE COULD CHOOSE ONE'S OWN COLOURS AT
THE WAR OFFICE."]

* * * * *

THE V.C.

My cousin Agatha has been a bad correspondent ever since she
married my old friend, George Thimblewell, which means for the past
five-and-twenty years, so in ordinary circumstances I do not expect
more from her than a "hasty line" to tell me how the youngsters are
doing (George, of course, never writes at all). But I must say I was
surprised and not a little hurt when, in the skimpy margin of a letter
dealing mainly with the difficulty of devising breakfast-dishes, she
scribbled in the most casual manner conceivable, "George has got the
V.C. at last."

George, my dear old school-chum, with the V.C., and his wife tells me
of it as casually as if it had been a gumboil! I sat with her letter
before me and looked back through the years, seeing us two--George
and myself-