Excerpt from The Colonel's Christmas Dinner: And Other Stories When a man's in trouble, in nine cases out of ten, the quicker he tells his wife, the sooner it's over. The co10 nel went home overcome with the weight of his woe. For a moment his better half was, apparently, as prostrated as himself - no woman likes to have a dinner-party ruined, either by having too little to eat or too many to eat it but no sooner did she note his profound dejection, than she arose to the occasion. Never mind, Colonel, the missing dinner will turn up in time, and if it doesn't, we'll make them so welcome, after their hard trip, that anything will taste good. And then, you know, there's the champagne we were saving for Dot's wedding. It will cover a multitude of sins like charity. Don't you worry. I'll manage it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.