... BUBBLE SQUEAK Stories from Everywhere Taking a walk in Galway, a priest stopped to ask an Irish peasant how far it was to Corrofin. About half a mile down the road, Father. And God speed you! He walked a half mile, then another. Not until he had walked six miles did the priest arrive at Corrofin. When he returned in the late afternoon he met the same Irishman. What did you mean by telling ...

... * By MARY DUNN. YOUNG Mr. McFarlane-- late Lieut. McFarlane-- permitted himself the small vanity of stopping his car 50 yards inside the gates of Bruford Park and looking at himself in the driving mirror. The reflection was reassuring: well-cut suit, quiet tie, decidedly more of the officer than the press photographer about him. He could not but think that Lady Colchester would be surprised. ...

... * By NINA WARNER HOOKE. CYNICS have often claimed that all experience brings disillusion. But the astonishing plight in which Mr. Blenkinsop found himself proved to him that this is not necessarily so. Being shipwrecked in tropical waters had turned out to be every bit as highly coloured and uncomfortable as he had pictured it in his wildest flights of fancy. The raft on which he sat with his ...

... b3hL a the stricken heart. fi JfiMl US By CHARLES BIRKIN. FROM what she could see through the halo round the head of St. John the Baptist, the sky appeared to be clearing. Throughout the early morning a depressing drizzle had fallen, which, while realising the aptitude of a weeping heaven for a funeral, Elizabeth Penvill had found distinctly untimely, for owing to ...

... AS OTHERS SEE US* By ERIC SONNISCHEN. THEY stepped out into the bright moonlight that lay over the beach and water. His hand held her arm as he helped her walk through the loose sand. It s beautiful, isn t it He spoke softly, as though not to disturb nature. Yes, it is, she answered. She stopped walking. He stood still, his hands hanging by his sides as his chest expanded with air. He ...

... By SIMON FOWLER. CLOSING the front door softly behind him, Robert Martin stood in the dingy hall of No. 93, Paradise Row. For twenty years, ever since his marriage, he had lived in the same little slut of a house. For twenty years he had sat at the same desk in the same office doing exactly the same kind of work. He hung his hat on the ornate stand which had been his firm's wedding present, in ...

... * By KATE THOMPSON EM, said James Barstead. What do you think to a little surprise? Mrs. Barstead put her chrysanthemum-ringleted head on one side and smiled her sideways smile with one eye shrewdly half-shut. Eh? Just you and me a little week-end in the country What do you think to that She looked at James's bland, grey-grizzled head, his still -rotund person and away from him to the ...

... A FIGHTER PILOTS SHOULDN'T DREAM. aJs* U^-IS By WING SLIP. (BEING OUR SHORT STORY.>* THE two Polish pilots jumped into the dug-out. Spirodvy laughed tensely: I 'm glad we are not mere clay pigeons this time, to be shot out of the sky! Steel fragments sang past above their heads. Zbroutch ducked. We 'll have to fall back. Lieutenant Joseph Rabotsky ignored the swooping Heinkels. This third ...

... By FRANCIS BUTTERS. HELEN CHRISTY drew a quick breath. Oh, but it's lovely, she gasped, her eyes gleaming. The salesman smiled. I thought you would like it. The only mink coat we've had this season, Madam, and I doubt if we shall have another. That is why I wished you to see it first. The best bargains should be reserved for the best customers. He slipped the coat from the hanger and ...

... By MICHAEL HASTINGS. HE felt more at ease in the fog, which eclipsed all identities. It reduced everything to the same vague denominator which characterised himself. Even the buildings lost some of their solid immutability, and streets might be changed over without anybody realising it. Also, he thought, only a lunatic would search for an escaped criminal in a thick fog. Assuming, of course, ...

... By PAT FUTRELLE. IT seemed that the bell clanged loudly enough to awaken the dead. Gerald Angold waited patiently on the top step. There was no sound from behind the door and, for a moment, he panicked. Then he remembered that old Humphries was as deaf as a post, just the sort of butler to fit in with Frost's peculiar trade. 'He tugged at the bell-pull again and smiled his satisfaction as he ...

... By NORMAN WOODESON. POOR, poor Belinda! said Prince Charming, stroking her golden tresses. I must leave you now for foreign climes! B-but how shall I live without you? sobbed the poor girl, tenderly regarding her husband's new official armour of black coat and pin-striped trousers and proudly remembering the Government passport in his pocket. Come, come, my dear, dry those big blue eyes. ...