me very privately that
the Singleweeds were two of the most interfering, bigoted, cabbage-eating
old cats that he had ever come across."

"Cabbage-eating!" repeated Margery thoughtfully. "How stupid we are. That's
it, of course."

"What's it?"

"Why, cabbage-eating. The Singleweeds haven't touched meat since I don't
know when, so for a consideration of brussels-sprouts and a few digestive
biscuits the Joneses will have five pounds of genuine beef to play with."

"Hogs!" I said.

The hospitable influence of the new scheme of rationing spread very
rapidly. A few days later we heard that Sir Meesly Goormay, the most
self-indulgent and incorrigible egotist in the neighbourhood, had
introduced a collection of octogenarian aunts to his household, and, when I
was performing my afternoon beat, I was just in time to see the butcher's
boy, assisted by the gardener, delivering what looked to be a baron of beef
at Sir Meesly's back door. It was an enervating and disgusting spectacle,
well calculated to upset the _moral_ of the steadiest special in the local
force.

That night at dinner I had a Machiavellian thought.

"Look here," I said, stabbing at a plate of _petit pois_ (1911) and
mis-cueing badly, "what about having Uncle Tom to stay for a few weeks?"

"Last time he came," replied Margery, "you said that nothing would induce
you to ask him again. You haven't forgotten his chronic dyspepsia, have
you?"

"Of course not," I retorted, looking a little pained at such flagrant
gaucherie; "but you can't cast off a respectable blood relation because he
happens to live on charcoal and hot water."

I delivered an irritable attack on a lentil pudding.

"Right-O," agreed Marjory. "And I'll ask Joan as well. She won't be able to
come until Friday, because she's having some teeth extracted on Thursday."

After all Marjory is not altogether without perception.

Dinner over I wrote, in my best style, a short spontaneous invitation to
Uncle Tom. Margery wrote a more discursive one to Joan.

"I think we ought to celebrate this," I suggested. "Let's be extravagant."

"All right," said Margery. "What shall it be, champagne or potatoes?"

Two days later I received the following:--

"MY DEAR JAMES,--Thank you very much for your invitation, which I am very
pleased to accept. The country, after all, is the proper place for old
fogeys like myself, as it is very difficult for them to live up to the
present-day bustle of a large city