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Moather (whose husband has lately joined the Territorials). "Do you know, darling, Daddy is a soldier now?"

Child. "Oh! mummy. Then will he come up to the pram and say, 'Hello, baby, and how's Nanny?'"

Henery—for that was what everyone called him—was the despair of the village recruiters. Everyone tried to induce him to enlist and everyone failed ignominiously. The Vicar, who had conceived the totally erroneous idea that Henery had conscientious objections to fighting, proved to him that fighting in a cause like ours was clearly justified by all laws human and divine.

"Don't you go 'pologisin' to me for goin', Sir," said Henery. "I'd never think o' blamin' you, Sir. I minds my own business."

The postmistress, greatly daring, presented him with a white feather.

"Thankee, Miss," said Henery, putting it in his hat, "but I tells you if you goes chasin' Squire's ducks to give young men presents you'll get into trouble."

The Squire himself told Henery that every young man who could shoulder a gun ought to be off.

"It's none o' my business, Sir," said Henery.

"Is there a coward in this village?" demanded the Squire.

"Your gamekeepers don't think so if they swore true at petty sessions," replied Henery.

And certainly it was a fact that Henery on one splendid occasion had tackled three gamekeepers and thrashed them horribly.

Not even the news that his stepbrother Albert had been taken prisoner moved Henery.

"Why should I go botherin' about 'im bein' in prison! 'E never went and fought no one when I was doin' three weeks instead o' paying five pound and costs."

Even Mr. Bates of "The Bull" used his potent influence in vain. "Look 'ere, Henery, just you see what these Uns have been up to."

"They never done nothing to me," persisted Henery.

But one morning the postman handed Henery a postcard over the garden hedge.

Henery read the postcard with difficulty, put his spade in an outhouse, took down his old hat with the white feather in it and walked straight to the railway station.

"Where are you goin', Henery?" asked the station-master.

"Off to 'list. Look at that postcard."

The station-master read "Thanks for fags. Why didn't you send something to eat? Hoping this finds you well as it leaves me at present. Albert."

"I sent 'im a pork-pie with them fags," said Henery. "'E was always a wunner for pork-pie. Well, they pinched it. Now I minds my business, but folks as interferes with me gets sorry. I'll make that Keeser sorry 'e touched my pork-pie."

And leaping into the train, and waving the white-feathered hat in farewell, Henery departed into the unknown.

"The butterflies of this month are very few, apart from the second-hand hibernators from last year. The green hairstreak is a surprise without a rival. Who could see an apple-green butterfly without marking it with a red lotter?"—Daily News.

This branding of butterflies, even if they are second-hand, ought to be stopped.