The take at McDonald’s: $24 billion. But Pret a Manger — the name means “ready to eat” in French — is slowly expanding in New York and other American cities with its own brand of grab-and-go food and, more significantly, a fresh approach to fast-food service.

Buffeted by criticism of his policy on Europe, battered by rebellion in the ranks over his bill to legalize same-sex marriage and wounded by the perception that he is supercilious, contemptuous and out of touch with mainstream Conservatism, Mr. Cameron earlier this week took the highly unusual step of sending a mass e-mail (or, as he called it, “a personal note”) to his party’s grass-roots members.

The Duchess of Fitz-Fulke, who loved tracasserie, Began to treat him with some small agacerie.

A very interesting form of purpura is that arising from congenital peculiarity:—Four or five years ago a poor mother brought her child, then aged 2 years, affected with this form of disease. The least blow upon the limbs produced effusions of blood, and a purpurous spot was the result, which soon resembled a large bruise; any puncture of the skin was followed by uncontrollable hæmorrhage; the gums very readily bled. […] During the last winter, the child was again brought to me, but in a dying state, […] The poor mother afterwards came in great distress, because a medical practitioner, who had been called in to see the child, not recognising the nature of the malady, said there must be a coroner's inquest; the purpurous vibices upon the body being mistaken for the bruises of ill treatment.