the Press. Anyway she has refused--and will, I fancy, never relent--to
allow any extreme idea of food shortage to disturb her routine.

"Look here, Mrs. Legion," you say, "really, you know"--you don't like,
or you have lost the power, to be too firm with her after all these
years of friendliness--"really we mustn't have toast any more."

"Not toast!"

"No, not any more. In fact"--a light laugh here--"I'm going to do
without bread altogether directly."

"Do without bread!" This with much more alarmed surprise than if you
had declared your intention of forswearing clothes.

"Yes; the Government want us to eat less bread. In fact we must, you
know; and toast is particularly wasteful, they say."

"There's no waste in this house, Sir [or 'M]." This with a touch
of acerbity, for Mrs. Legion is not without pride. "No one can ever
accuse me of waste. I'm not vain, but that I will say."

"No, no," you hasten to reply, "of course not; but things have reached
such a point, you know, that even the strictest economy and care have
got to be made more strict. That's all. And toast has to be stopped,
I'm afraid."

"Very well, Sir [or 'M], if you wish it. But I can't say that I
understand what it all means."

And that evening, which is meatless and is given up largely to
asparagus (just beginning, thank God!), you certainly see no toast in
the rack, but find that the tender green faggot reposes on a slab of
it large enough to feed several children.

Mrs. Legion may go to church, but her real religion is concerned far
more with her employers' bodies than with her own soul; and among the
cardinal tenets of her faith is the necessity for dinner to be hot.
You may have a cold lunch, but everything at dinner must have been
cooked especially for that meal, all circling about the joint, or a
bird, like satellite suns.

How to cleave such a rock of tradition? How to bring the old Tory into
line with the new rules and yet not break her heart?

"And, Mrs. Legion," you say, not too boldly, and at the end of
some other remark, "we'll have yesterday's leg of mutton for dinner
to-night, with a salad."

"Cold mutton for dinner?" she replies dully.

"Yes--now the weather's getting warmer it's much nicer. It will save
coal too. Just the mutton and a salad. No potatoes."

"No potatoes!" Surely the skies are falling, says her accent. You have
been eating mashed potatoes, done with cream and a dash of beetroot in
it, with cold meat, at l