looking-glass. They brought me a piece of the
one I had cast away. It was very small, but it served my purpose. I
gazed and heaved a sigh of rapturous content; a sigh that came from my
very heart. My beard was short and thick, its colour a deep glorious
brown, with golden lights here and there where the sunbeams danced in
some lighter cluster of its curling strands. A beard that a king might
wear.

I have never shaved again. Every morning now, while untold millions
of my suffering fellows are groaning beneath their razors, I steal an
extra fifteen minutes from the day and lie and laugh inside my beard.

"And what of Emily?" you ask.

Almost immediately after my return she left us. She gave no reason.
She was not unhappy, she said. She wished to make a change, that was
all. To this day my wife cannot account for her departure. But I know
why she went. Emily was a patriot with a purpose. A month after she
parted from us I received a letter from her:--

"Dear Sir,--May I ask you to take into consideration the fact that
by having ceased to shave you will in future be effecting a slight
economy in your daily expenditure? Might I also suggest to you
that during the remainder of the War you should make a voluntary
contribution to the national exchequer of every shilling saved under
this head? The total sum will not be large, but everything counts.
Yours is, if I may be allowed to say so, the finest beard I have been
instrumental in producing during my two and a half years' experience
in domestic service. I am now hard at work on my sixth case, which is
approaching its crisis.

Apologising for any temporary inconvenience I may have caused you, I
am,

Yours faithfully, EMILY JOHNSON,

_Foundress and President of the
Housemaids' Society for the
Promotion of Patriotic Beards._"

I never showed the letter to my wife, but I have acted on Emily's
suggestion. I often think of her still, her whole soul afire with her
patriotic mission, flitting, the very flower of housemaids, from home
to home, lingering but a little while in each, in each content for
that little while to be loathed and stormed at by an exasperated
shaver, whom she transforms into a happy bearded contributor to her
fund.

* * * * *

=Another Impending Apology.=

"This terrible fire roused hundreds of people from their beds,
and a great crowd gathered in the adjoining streets; but
Sub-divisional Inspec