rse we were
fairly well off for our Tired People, because they had soldiers'
rations; but even so, we almost forgot what a joint looked like. Stews
and hot pots and made dishes--you call them that because you make them
of anything but meat! We became very clever at camouflaging meat dishes.
Somehow the Tired People ate them all. But"--she paused, laughing--"you
know I never thought I could feel greedy for meat. And I did--I just
longed, quite often, for a chop!"

"And could you not have one?"

"Gracious, no!" Norah looked amazed. "Chops were quite the most
extravagant thing of all--too much bone. You see, the meat ration
included bone and fat, and I can tell you we were pretty badly worried
if we got too much of either."

"To think of all she knows," said the aunt, regarding her with a tearful
eye. Whereat Norah laughed.

"Oh, I could tell you lots of homely things," she said. "How we always
boiled bones for soup at least four times before we looked on them as
used up; and how we worked up sheep's heads into the most wonderful
chicken galantines; and--but would you mind if I ate some walnut cake
instead? It's making me tremble even to look at it."

After which Jean Yorke and the russet-brown waitresses vied in plying
the new-comers with the most elaborate cakes, until even Jim and Wally
begged for mercy.

"You ought to remember we're not used to these things," Wally protested,
waving away a strange erection of cream, icing and wafery pastry. "If
I ate that it would go to my head, and I'd have to be removed in an
ambulance. And the awful part of it is--I want to eat it. Take it out of
my sight, Jean, or I'll yield, and the consequences will be awful."

"But it is too dreadful to think of all you poor souls have gone
through," said an aunt soulfully. "How little we in Australia know of
what war means!"

"But if it comes to that, how little we knew!" Norah exclaimed, "Why,
there we were, only a few miles from the fighting--you could hear the
guns on a still day, when a big action was going on; and except for the
people who came directly in the way of air raids, England knew little or
nothing of war: I mean, war as the people of Belgium and Northern France
knew it. The worst we had to admit was that we didn't get everything we
liked to eat, and that was a joke compared to what we might have had.
Hardly anyone in England went cold or hungry through the war, and so
I don't think we knew much about it either." She br