* * *

BLANCHE'S LETTERS.

WAR FASHIONS.

_Park Lane._

DEAREST DAPHNE,--People are going to the theatre a good deal, but not in
the old way. We wait in the queue now, and work our way up into the
gallery. We leave the stalls and boxes to _ces autres_. "Olga" has
created a simply charming queue-coat, heavy grey frieze, with plenty of
pockets and a cap to match with ear-pieces. You take a parcel of
sandwiches to eat while you're waiting (the _dernier cri_ is to wrap the
parcel in a spotted handkerchief), and, if you want to be immensely and
utterly right, you'll _walk_ home and buy a piece of fried fish on the
way for your supper.

A propos, there's quite a good little story being told about Lady
Goreazure and these topsy-turvy times. She was in the gallery at the
Incandescent the other night, and, on coming down, the gallery people,
finding it was pouring in torrents, crowded into the chief entrance for
shelter, to the enormous disgust of the stalls and boxes, who were just
coming out. A rose-coloured satin gown with ante-war bare arms and
shoulders, an ermine wrap, and a paste hair-bandeau was particularly
furious, and announced loudly that it was "an abominable shame to mix us
up with the gallery people in this way." Lady Goreazure thought she knew
the voice, and, turning, recognised in the angry pink-satin person her
maid, Dawkins, who left her some months ago to go into munition work.
She's a skilled hand now and simply coining money, as she told Lady G.
in a hurried furtive whisper, adding, "Please don't talk to me any more.
I shouldn't like my friends to see that I know anyone from the gallery."

One of the _literally_ burning questions of the moment has been how to
dispose of the little lanterns one's obliged to carry after dark now
that so many people have given their motors to the country and stump it
or bus it everywhere. Your Blanche has solved the difficulty and at the
same time set a fashion. My evening boots (what a different meaning that
phrase has from what it once had, my Daphne!) have darling little
teeny-weeny lamps fixed to their toes, so that one can see exactly where
one's stepping. With these boots is worn a toque with a small lamp
fastened in a velvet or ribbon _chou_ in front. The _boots_ are for
_one's own guidance_; the _toque illuminante_ is to show _other_ gropers
in the darkness that one's coming. Some people add a chic little hooter,
which clears the way quite nicely and