* * * * *

FAIR WEAR AND TEAR.

In a short time now we shall have to return this flat to its proper
tenants and arrive at some assessment of the damage done to their
effects. With regard to the other rooms, even the room which Richard
and Priscilla condescend to use as a nursery, I shall accept the
owners' estimate cheerfully enough, I think; but the case of the
drawing-room furniture is different. About the nursery I have
only heard vague rumours, but in the drawing-room I have been an
eye-witness of the facts.

The proper tenant is a bachelor who lived here with his sister; he
will scarcely realise, therefore, what happens at 5 P.M. every day,
when there comes, as the satiric poet, LONGFELLOW, has so finely
sung--

"A pause in the day's occupations,
Which is known as the children's hour."

Drawing-room furniture indeed! When one considers the buildings and
munition dumps, the live and rolling stock, the jungles and forests
in that half-charted territory; when one considers that even the
mere wastepaper basket by the writing-desk (and it _does_ look a bit
battered, that wastepaper basket) is sometimes the tin helmet under
which Richard defies the frightfulness of LARS PORSENA, and sometimes
a necessary stage property for Priscilla's two favourite dramatic
recitations