... THE Ponders were in the van of Fashion; that is to say, the Ponders themselves thought so, and by dint of frequent and judicious repetition induced a large number of their friends to believe it, and they daily abased themselves in reverential rows commencing on the Ponders' immaculate doorstep and ending in their iniquitously expensive green and gold drawing-room. Sir William, it should be ...

... i _gj i r j yi --3^^ I T i/r5K''rtad8 glopgmgnt By FREDERICK FENN MRS. RUTLAND was one of those people whose chief interest in life lay in fancying that she was unhappy. She felt that she ought to be pitied for having married John Rutland, and for having sacrificed the delights of London to become the sober wife of a substantial country gentle man and J. P. As a result, she spent her early ...

... v By C. STARR JOHNS MAX VON WOLLEN BERG dismissed his motor at a corner and walked rapidly along the Herthestrasse. Many men, who knew him by sight, saluted him respectfully, but he barely acknowledged their salutations, indeed, he hardly appeared to notice them. A small house stood a little way back from its neighbours. Here he paused, and rang the bell vigorously. Is your mistress in Yes, ...

... BY JESSIE G. COURT The Bystander M Surprise Story ...

... r Put It Down in the Bill BY HARFORD WORLOCK J C 'I'M just going round the shops, said Patricia, feel like coming? That little pig went to market this little pig stayed at home, I answered. Talking of pigs reminds me, Patricia chipped in do you think, if you approached him tactfully, the landlord might put a wing on to the larder Talking of pigs and wings, 1 observed, they might fly. ...

... Mute&osef) LATE in the night of that most fate ful of days, the fourth of August, 1914, the Colonel of a regiment which I must not name chanced to meet his senior subaltern at the corner of St. James's Street. The Colonel, who was in uniform, stopped the car which had just brought him from Aldershot, and beckoned to the other to join him. You're the very fellow I want to see, Mr. I1 Ringstone. ...

... THE LAST V BLUFF BY HAROLD THIRKELL IN a little upper chamber of the Imperial Palace at Potsdam sat the Supreme War Council-- a council of six only. The Kaiser was there, looking 1 morose and dissatisfied and I Mackensen and Von Hindenburs. the army's leaders of offensive, men of iron and brain i combined. Scholmein, too, was there, whose name even yet strikes the ear strangely, though we have ...

... BY BASIL H. WATT IT'S of no consequence at all, I assure you,'' said Miss Phyllida Steggs. Her parents had christened her Phyllida twenty years before in the expectation that she would be petite and shy. She had grown up tall and self-assured, and her manner combined sentiment with considerable savoir-faire. Both these qualities she derived from her papa and mamma. James Steggs owned two ...

... \v BY CECIL STARR JOHNS IT would be waste of time to try and describe Clare Frensham. No one could deny her beauty, nor could her hair, features, grace, and beauty of limb and body be adequately expressed without combining all the Arts. Her complexion was in keeping with the red gold of her hair, her expression was mobile arid fascinating. When Major Vibart first met her she was living in I a ...

... *nd7ng II.-- A HUNDRED YEARS. By DELL LEIGH HIDDEN away amid a clump of tall poplars on the flat lands of Northern France the old château still stands, approached by what was once a regal drive, but which is now merely an excessively muddy lane, rut-seared and neglected. It remains a dull grey stone edifice of sixteenth century type, rambling and prosaic. But it is unique in a country of ...

... f Love s Last V Leave BY VIOLET HUNT WHAT is the good?'' said the wife of Major Leclerc. ''There isn't a man left in England to dress for. I just don't do it. I'm economising. If George were to come back 11 suddenly and see me, -ke'd have a fit. Her friend, looking at Augusta Leclerc's neglected n waistline, down at her low-heeled, laced boots, up at I her hat, tall where it should have been ...

... the Eternal SHADOW i 1 I II Hi Du nial qu'une amour ignoree Nous fait souffrir J 'en porte l'ame dechiree Jusqu'a mourir. WE had been down at the Roman Catholic chapel of the French Mission to hear a little music. Pleasure of this kind rarely came our way in the little Malayan town which lay so far from the track of modern civilisation. There were three of us living there together in the C.P ...