cially as she herself loved a long, aimless gossip about
the Royal Family or whether Lord Kitchener had ever _really_ been in
love. Or she tried, since she was a poor worker herself--her only
jersey and muffler were really finished by her maid--reading aloud
to the knitters or stitchers, preferably from the works of Miss
Charlotte Yonge or some similar novelist of a later date. But that
was found to be too disturbing to their sense of the ludicrous. For
she read very stiltedly, with a strange exotic accent for the love
passages or the death scenes. As Lady Victoria Freebooter said, she
would have been _priceless_ at a music-hall matinee which was
raising funds for war charities, if only she could have been induced
to read passages from Miss Yonge in _that_ voice for a quarter of an
hour. Even the Queen would have had to laugh.

But as that could not be brought off, it was decided that working
parties at her house led to too much giddiness from suppressed
giggles or torpor from too much food. So she relapsed once more into
loneliness. Unfortunately air-raids were now becoming events of
occasional fright and anxiety in London, and this deterred Cousin
Sophie from Darlington, Cousin Matty from Leeds, Joseph's wife from
Northallerton or old, married schoolfellows from other northern or
midland towns coming to partake of her fastuous hospitality. Also,
they all seemed to be busy, either over their absent husbands'
business, or their sons', or because they were plunged in war work
themselves. "And really, in these times, I couldn't stand Linda for
more than five minutes," one of them said.

As to the air-raids, she was not greatly alarmed at them. Of course
it was very uncomfortable having London so dark at night, but then
she only went out in the afternoon, and never in the evening. And
the Germans seemed to be content and discriminating enough not to
bomb what she called "the resi_den_tial" parts of London. The
nearest to Portland Place of their attentions was Hampstead or
Bloomsbury. "We are protected, my dear, by the open spaces of
Regent's Park. They wouldn't like to waste their bombs on poor me!"

However her maid didn't altogether like the off chance of the
Germans or our air-craft guns making a mistake and trespassing on
the residential parts of London, so she persuaded her mistress to
spend part of the winter of 1915-16 at Bournemouth. Here she was not
happy and far lonelier even than in London. She did not like t