"When I was out in Hongkong og a youngster, 20 years ago, the girl of the island was Lucy Me-Naught," writes Bassett Digby in the London: "Daily News." Everything in trousers wag the captive of her bow and spear, but she had two especially favoured suitors. She was always one for a bit of devilment, and ome day she hit on a scheme that made her jump for joy. The Number One garden boy showed her a cobra that he kept in the big corn bin behind the stables, catch rats, It wasn't precisely tame—no cobra is that. But its poison, tangs had been torn out, and though it was a good ratter it was quite harmless, The Chinese often keep them like that for discouraging rats, "Lucy's notion was to invite: lea two pet suitors up to tea, one at four o'clock, the other at five. She was going to be alone, in a. secluded part of the grounds, leaning back in a deck-chair, shamming sleep. The cobra was! going to be lying at her feet, What would happen?. How would the} two chaps react to the test. Made! her chuckle, you know, to think of!
"She rigged everything © up/ smoothly. The notes of invitation were sent out and gratefully ac-' cepted. She told Number One and the house-boy that she did not want to be disturbed. They brought the! eckra and left it, coiled up sleepily by the cake stand, Then Lucy opened a book and waited for the Four! ©'Olock Man.
"It was a sleepy afternoon. She shut the book and gazed lazily up at the blue shadows of the Peak—they had one of those -big houses just above Kennedy Road, you know. Soon she began to doze. She dropped off to sleep.
"The Four o'Clock Man arrived, lying almost on Lucy's little feet. As he approached it reared its neck and inflated: its eerie spectacled sh hood. He made a lunge at it—but it was too quick for him. The same sharp little teeth that dealt swiftly with the rats in the cornbin gripped his hand. He flung the snake into the bushes. Then catching sight of the startled face of Lucy, who suddenly woke up, and unable to face the fatal parcisms of agony that speedily brings death to the cobra's victim, he pull-el out a revolver and shot himself before she could explain."
"H'm so the Five o'Clock Man won her, then?" I hazarded, _"No, I didn't," explained Williams. "She entered a convent and took the veil."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.