The other day I was in a country house whose owners are so lost to shame as
still to keep pets. There is a dog there which is actually allowed to eat,
in defiance of all those _Times'_ correspondents whose sole idea of this
stimulating and unfailingly devoted animal is that it is personified greed
on four legs. There are two or three horses of unusual intelligence, which
no doubt our friend the Hun would long since have devoured, but which, even
though hunting is over, are by some odd freak of sentiment or even of
loyalty still kept alive. There are rabbits. And there is a bird in a cage
against the wall of a small yard. This bird is a chaffinch, which a friend
had brought over from France.
After I had fraternised shamefully with all these deplorable drones, my
hostess drew my attention to the French chaffinch, a line big fellow, very
tame and cheerful. "We will feed him," she said, "and then you will see
something that happens every day. Something very interesting."
So saying she poured into a receptacle for the purpose enough seed, no
doubt, to make, mixed with other things, several admirable thimble-loaves
of bread substitute, and told me to watch.
I watched, and very soon the French chaffinch, having eaten a certain
amount of the seed, dashed his beak amid the rest with such violence that
it was spilt over the pan, out of the bars and down to the ground below.
"That's very wasteful," I said. "Lord DEVONPORT wouldn't like that--Lord
DEVONPORT wouldn't;" this being the kind of facetious thing we are all
saying just now, and something facetious being in this particular house
always, for some reason or other, expected of me.
"Wait a minute," my hostess replied. "There's more reason in it than you
think."
And there was.
The whole point of this mediocre narrative consists in the fact that within
a few seconds some dozen sparrows had descended to the yard and were
feeding busily while the chaffinch watched from above. And this happens at
every mealtime.
To what extent we are contributing to the French Commissariat I cannot say;
but with my own eyes I have seen a French citizen being systematically
generous to his English cousins.
* * * * *
"The sale [of potatoes] started at 6 a.m., and the first omnibus from
London brought over 200 buyers down."--_Weekly Dispatch._
A gross case of overcrowding.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Civilian _(_who has been asked to luncheon at outlying
fort_). "I SAY, YOU KNOW, I CAN'T POSSIBLY LAND BY THAT ABSURD LITTLE
LADDER."
_Host._ "ROT, OLD CHAP. I'VE HAD THE VERY DICKENS OF A JOB TO GET YOU A
PASS--AND, BESIDES, PEOPLE DON'T OFTEN FALL IN."]
* * * * *