ling from "The Plough" to Nightingale Lane. As
the boys pass the likely girls they glance, and, if not rebuffed, offer
wide smiles. But they do not stop. At the second meeting, however, they
smile again and touch hands in passing, or cry over the shoulder some
current witticism, as: "'Snice night, Ethel!" or "I should shay sho!"

And Ethel and Lucy will swing round, challengingly, with scraping feet,
and cry, "Oooh!" The boys linger at the corner, looking back, and the
girls, too, look back. Ethel asks Lucy, "Shall we?" and Lucy says,
"Oooh--I d'no," and by that time the boys have drawn level with them.
They say, "Isn't it cold?" or "Awf'ly warm 'sevening!" And then, "Where
you off to in such a hurry?"

"Who--me?"

"Yes--you. Saucy!"

"Ooh--I d'no!"

"Well--shall we stroll 'cross the Common?"

"I don' mind."

Then boys and girls move forward together for the bosky glades of the
Common. They have "clicked." They have "got off."

In the light evenings the children sometimes take Mother for a 'bus ride
to Kingston or Mitcham, or Uncle George may drop in and talk to them
about the garden. While the elders talk gardens, the kiddies play in the
passage at sliding down the banisters. Having regard to its value in
soothing the nerves and stimulating the liver, and to the fact that it
is an indoor pastime within the reach of high and low, I never
understand why banister-sliding has not become more popular. I should
imagine that it would be an uproariously successful innovation at any
smart country house, during the long evenings, and the first hostess who
has the courage to introduce it will undoubtedly reap her reward....

There are, of course, other domesticities around Clapham Common on a
slightly higher scale; for there are roads and roads of uniform houses
at rents of L60 and L70 per annum, and here, too, sweetness and (pardon
the word) Englishness spread their lambent lustre.

Here they do not come home to tea; they come home to dinner. Dinner is
usually the simple affair that you get at Simpson's: a little soup
followed by a joint and vegetables, and a sweet of some sort. Beer is
usually drunk, though they do rise to wine on occasion. Here, too, they
have a real dining-room, very small, but still ... a dining-room. They
keep a maid, trim and smiling. And after dinner you go into the
drawing-room. The drawing-room is a snug little concern, decorated in a
commonplace way, but usually a corner where you can be at