Scottish reel,
this rhyme----

"Daddy is a Sergeant, a Sergeant, a Sergeant!
Daddy is a Sergeant, a Sergeant of Police."

So I opened the nursery door and went in. An uncle has no honour in his
own country, and my two small nieces assaulted me immediately. Phyllis
dragged me to a chair, while Lillah shrieked unrelentingly in my ear
that Daddy was a sergeant.

"So the special constables have seen that your father is a born
policeman?" I said as I sat down.

"The _special_ ones," nodded Phyllis with profound pride.

"Magnificent," I murmured. "He has at last justified his choice of the
law as a profession."

"Tell us," said Lillah, with the air with which one speaks of a
self-made man who has just appeared in the Honours List--"tell us how
Daddy started."

"He went to the Bar," I said.

"Bar?" echoed Lillah.

"Why, yes," I said; "it's a place where people wait."

"Like a station?"

"Only the trains don't always come in. Anyway, on one side of the bar
are a lot of young men waiting for something to turn up, and on the
other a lot of old men writing autobiographies."

"But aren't there any middling-olders?" This is Phyllistian for men of
middle age.

"Not allowed," I said. "At the Bar you are either a junior or a
reminiscer."

"What's that?"

"It's an illness that attacks people who aren't really famous."

Phyllis stared. "Like measles?"

I nodded.

"Oh," cried Lillah eagerly, "do the reminiscers go all pink?"

"They ought to," said I.

There was a silence. The round eyes of Phyllis were full of suspicion.

"Daddy said," she remarked slowly, "that he did law."

"So he does," I answered.

"Well, what's that, then?"

Small girls ask questions in two words which wise men must write books
to answer.

"The law," I answered warily, "gives reasons for things that are
unreasonable."

"Like what?" said Phyllis.

I laughed a little uneasily. This was getting difficult.

"Oh--er--things like getting married," I said, "and refraining from
shooting little girls who ask questions."

I admit that this sort of joke is the last infirmity of an uncle's
otherwise noble mind. They regarded me sadly.

Then Lillah turned to Phyllis with a detached air. "Uncle James is being
grand," she said, "because he doesn't know what law is."

"Don't you?" said Phyllis.

"Perhaps not," I murmured feebly. The nursery makes very small beer of
the cynic. There was a moment's silence.

"You've told us wrong,"