Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/510

"Francesca," I said, "the War———"

"Yes," she said, "I know. The War is going on. There's no need to tell me that. A good many people seem to have heard about it."

"I wasn't going to tell you that."

"Well, what were you going to tell me, then?"

"I don't know," I said. You caught me up so sharply that you've knocked it all out of my mind."

"I wonder what it can have been," she said. "There's not much that's new to be said about the War. It's been perfectly hateful all the time."

"It has," I said, "but we've got to set our teeth and see it through."

"Yes," she said, "and we've all got to help wherever we can."

"Bravo!" I said. "Even men beyond the military age can be useful as volunteers, or subscribers to funds, or in a thousand other ways."

"And women," she said enthusiastically, "have at last found their true spheres. After this men will no longer be able to sneer."

"They never were," I said. "That is to say, they never were able to sneer properly. It takes a better man than most men are to do that."

"All the same," she said, "a good many men tried."

"It was a poor effort," I said.

"Yes," she said, "it was. It always began by declaring that women had no logic."

"Logic!" I said. "Pooh! What is logic? Who cares about it?"

"Logic," she said, "is the science and art of reasoning correctly. I looked it up in a dictionary."

"And here is a woman," I said, "who can find time in the midst of a million Committees to look up a disagreeable word in a dictionary. Francesca, why did you do that?"

"The newspapers keep on telling us," she said, "that we must try to understand our enemies. Logic never was a friend of mine, so———"

"So you looked him up," I said, "in order to smash him. Splendid!"

"If logic was any good," she said, "there wouldn't be a Kaiser. But there is a Kaiser, so logic's no good."

"Logically," I said, "that settles it. I'm not sure you haven't been guilty of a syllogism or something of that kind, but, anyhow, you've settled logic. What shall we put in its place?"

"Sympathy," she said, "charity, mutual help, relief funds, Red Cross Hospitals, St. John Ambulance—any amount of things."

"Yes," I said, "they're all excellent; but we want to invent something quite new, something that will take our thoughts off the War for a moment or two."

"That's difficult," she said. "But not impossible. Why not try footmanry?"

"Footman what?" she said.

"Footmanry. It is the new science and art of footmen. Yeoman—yeomanry. Footman—footmanry."

"It's out of the beaten track, anyway," she said. "How do you work it?"

"Well, you begin by postulating a footman."

"It sounds cruel," she said, "but I think I can manage it."

"Then you inquire into him, and you find that the footman is the young of the butler."

"Yes," she said, "but the butler doesn't like his young. In fact he can't bear him. He says he can't get him out of bed in the morning."

"But if the butler doesn't like him, why doesn't he leave him in bed? That's one of the questions the new science will answer."

"As far as my experience goes," she said, "the reason is that if the footman didn't get up there'd be nobody to help in smashing glasses and other things. Glasses have to be smashed regularly, and so the footman must get up. It's one of the rules."

"Yes," I said, "and another rule is that after a year or so the footman wants to better himself, but according to the butler he gets worse all the time."

"And when he betters himself he vanishes."

"And when he's bettered himself about four times he turns into a butler himself and begins to dislike footmen."

"I see," she said, that there are many fascinating mysteries about footmen."

"There are," I agreed. "Why, for instance, do they never take down a telephone message correctly?"

"Lots of people can't do that. Some of the best Dukes are said to be thoroughly inefficient at it, and you yourself———"

Thank you," I said, "we needn't go further than a Duke or a footman."

"But it wasn't a Duke or a footman who took down Mrs. Hutchinson's message the other day. It was———"

"All right," I said, "all right. I know who it was. You needn't keep rubbing it in. Besides, Mrs. Hutchinson is deaf."

"Which, of course, explains why you couldn't hear her."

"It does," I said. "Deaf ladies talking through a telephone have a shattering effect on a high-strung sensitive temperament like mine."

"I thought," she said, "you were one of the strong silent ones."

"So I was," I said, "but it was long ago. What's the use of being strong and silent when you've got a wife and three girls in the house?"

"If you take it like that," she said, "it's no good talking at all."

"We will not discuss telephone messages any more," I said with dignity.

"No," she said, "we won't. Let's finish off about footmen. Do you know that it's Thomas's birthday to-day?"

"I didn't know footmen worried about birthdays."

"Well," she said, "ours does. He's nineteen to-day, and told me this morning he's going to enlist, and hopes I shall be able to suit myself."

"Well done, Thomas! But he'll have to get up earlier than ever when he's a soldier."

"He'll soon get used to that when he never goes to bed at all."

"Anyhow," I said, "he's bettered himself with a vengeance this time."

"Yes," she said, "and when the War's over he can come back and unbetter himself back into our footman again."

"Certainly," I said, "and he shall have the run of the glass-cupboard. He shall break as much as ever he likes when he returns." R. C. L.

"The operation undertaken by the French and British in concert must clearly have been thought out and prepared beforehand."

The Times.

"In the course of the day General Botha received a representative deputation of the male residents. The marital law proclamation issued by General Botha...."—Newcastle Erening Chronicle.

So that was what the male residents went to see him about.

Germany's latest ambition; a place in the San.