She's just whispered to me that she's put a surprise
in one of the cakes. I know her. It won't be an ordinary sort of
surprise. I should advise you all to keep a sharp look-out. There's a
pound" (it was worth a pound to save a hero's throat from being cut)
"for the man who finds anything in his cake which hasn't any business
to be there."
Within five minutes two pebbles, a tin-tack, a chunk of wood and a
black-beetle were on the tablecloth....
"Do you know that flutter's cost me five pounds, and there wasn't a
sign of your infernal knife after all?" I said to Emily when they'd
gone.
"I've just found it under the kitchen table," said Emily. "I _am_
thankful."
* * * * *
"This company's year ended on the 40th June, and a good
distribution is looked for by the market."--_Journal of
Commerce_.
With such help from the calendar any company should do well.
* * * * *
THE SIGNAL SECTION.
You know how the great hunter who sleeps with his gun at his pillow
is awake in an instant, with all his faculties alert, when the sacred
spider breaks a twig in the jungle? You remember how the handsome
highwayman, at the first far clatter of hoofs on the great North Road,
is up and out on the scullery roof of the inn before you have turned
the page, and is deep in Lonely Copse (wearing the serving-wench's
stomacher) before his first fat pursuer has said, "Open in the name of
the Law," below his window? Well, like Jimmy's bloodhound in _Punch_,
I am very good at that.
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