The doctor says it will not do you any harm--and we can have them in here, as you are the only invalid in hospital." "That'll be ten, with you and me," said I.
"Do you want quite so many ?" asked she, beginning to get a little concerned.
"Must have the lot or none," said I decisively.

"We can cut out Rackstraw and Walsh, if you like--they're paupers." "Oh, Tommy!" said the dear, tender-hearted one, "if they are not as well off as--" "Oh, that's not it.

They can shell out as well as anybody; only they got on our club for nothing on condition of towing the boats, cleaning up, and that sort of thing." "At any rate, let us have them," said my mother.
"All serene.

Will you write the invitations?
I say, mother, do you mind writing as well as you can?
Our chaps are rather particular, you know, and I wouldn't like them to snuff up at you." My poor dear mother began, I think, to repent of her hospitable offer, but decided to go through with it now.
So she got eight nice little sheets of scented invitation note, with envelopes to match, and wrote,-- "Mrs Jones requests the pleasure of Mr Alfred James Remington Trimble's company to tea in the Sanatorium parlour this evening at 6 p.m.;" and so on, in each case.
My suggestion to add "R.S.V.P." and "Evening dress _de rigueur_" she thought it best to decline.

But her kind leniency was thrown away, for within half an hour eight notes dropped in upon us, couched in the politest phraseology.
Here was Langrish's, for instance:-- "Everard Langrish, Esquire, begs to thank Mrs Jones for asking him to tea at six sharp, when he will be very pleased to fall in with her wishes and be of service in any other way her better feelings may dictate." Langrish told me afterwards he cribbed this last sentence out of a story he had read in a weekly newspaper.