he terrific problem
involved.

She does not say that the skirt and knickerbockers were made _of the
same kind of stuff_. If she had, I could have understood it, and my
natural delicacy would for ever have kept me from the slightest allusion
to the subject.

What she does say is that the skirt and knickerbockers were made _of the
same stuff_. That is very different, and involves hideous complications.

Firstly, it must mean that the knickerbockers were made out of the
skirt. Well, there may have been surplus material from that coloured
scarf, and it is not for me to say. But, secondly, it must also mean
that the skirt was made out of the knickerbockers. Oh, help!

No, I positively refuse. I will not say another word. There are limits.
Only an abstruse theologian with a taste for the more recondite niceties
of obscure heresies could possibly do justice to it.

All change, please. The next item on the programme will be a succinct
account of my ebullient girlhood.

I cannot say that I loved the Warren, my ancestral home. The neighbours
called it the Warren, but I can't think why. The Post Office said it was
No. 4, Catley Mews, Kentish Town, and dear papa--who always had the
_mot juste_--sometimes said that it was hell.

We were a high-spirited family with clean-cut personalities, penetrating
voices, short tempers, high nervous tension, and small feet. Don't you
wish you were like that?

All the same, there were only the four rooms over the stable. At times
there were fifteen or sixteen of us at home, and also the lodger--I
shall speak of him presently. And when you have five personal quarrels,
baby, the family wash, a sewing-machine, three mouth-organs, fried
bacon, and a serious political argument occurring simultaneously in a
restricted establishment, something has to go. As a rule, dear papa
went. He would make for Regent's Park, and find repose in the old-world
calm of the parrot-house at the Zoo.

But there is always room on the top--it is a conviction on which I have
ever acted. When I felt too cramped and stifled in the atmosphere of the
Warren, I would climb out on the roof. There, with nothing on but my
nightgown, tennis shoes, and the moonlight, I would dance frenetically.
The tiles would break loose beneath my gossamer tread and, accompanied
by sections of gutter, go poppity-swish into the street below and hit
all manner of funny things. I fancy that some of the funny things
complained. I know the poli