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[Illustration: PERFORMING LION AT MUSIC-HALL, HAVING GOT LOOSE, FINDS
ITS WAY TO ROOM OCCUPIED BY CHARWOMAN.

_Char_. "NAH, THEN! I WON'T 'AVE THEM NASTY THINGS IN 'ERE. I CAN'T
ABIDE 'EM."]

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BLANCHE'S LETTERS.

PEACE AND OTHER COMPLICATIONS.

_Park Lane_.

DEAREST DAPHNE,--Already everyone's got peace-strain and what state
we shall all be in by the time it's actually signed I haven't the
dimmest. People have their own ideas of how they mean to celebrate it,
and when they find that other people have the same ideas and mean to
do the same things at the same time there are alarums and excursions,
and things are said, and quite several people who were dear friends
during the War don't speak now owing to the peace!

_Par exemple_, marches and processions being so much in the air,
I'd planned a lovely Procession of Knitters; two enormous gilt
knitting-needles to be carried by the leaders and a banner with "We
Knitted our Way to Victory!" and myself on a triumphal car dressed in
white silk-knitting. And then, just as everything was being arranged
at our "Knitters' Peace Procession" committee meetings, I found that
Beryl Clarges had _stolen my idea_ and was arranging a "Crochet Peace
Procession," with an immense gilt crochet-hook to be carried in front,
and a banner with some nonsense about crochet on it, and herself on a
triumphal car dressed in crochet!

I said exactly what I thought before I left off speaking to her.

Then, again, everyone wants to give a dance on peace night. I'd
settled to give a big affair with some perfectly new departures, and
all the nicest people I wanted have said, "Sorry, dearest, but I'm
giving one myself that night." I've no patience with the silliness and
selfishness of everybody.

Talking of dances, one's getting a bit _degoutee_ of Jazz bands and
steps. When _ces autres_ get hold of anything it always begins to
leave off being amusing. There's really a new step, however, the Peace
Leap, that hasn't yet been quite _use_ and spoilt by the outlying
tribes. The origin of it was a little funny. Chippy Havilland was
at one of Kickshaw's Jazz dinners one night, where people fly out of
their seats to one-step and two-step between the courses and during
the courses and all the time. Well, while Chippy was eating his fish
the band struck up that catchy Jazz-stagger, "She's corns on her
toes," and Chippy, his mouth full o