ght to turn my attention before the war came along),
we have found it necessary to adopt a policy of retrenchment and
reform; and one of our first moves in this direction was to convert
Evangeline from a daily into a half-daily. Evangeline is not a
newspaper but a domestic servant, and before the new order was issued
she had been in the habit of arriving at our miniature flat at 7.30 in
the morning (when it wasn't 8.15), and retiring at 9 in the evening.

Now, however, Evangeline goes after lunch, and Helen, who has bought a
shilling cookery book, prepares the dinner herself.

On the day in question Helen suddenly decided to spend the afternoon
repairing a week's omissions on the part of Evangeline. It proved a
veritable labour of Hercules, the flat being, as Helen with near
enough accuracy gave me to understand, an "Aegaean stable." Tea-time
came, but brought no tea. Shortly before seven Helen struck, and
declared (this time without any classical metaphor) that she wasn't
going to cook any dinner that evening. Not to be outdone, I affirmed
in reply that even if she did cook it I wasn't going to clear it away.
So we cleaned and adorned ourselves and groped our way to the Rococo.

We were both too tired to go to the trouble of choosing our dinner,
and it was therefore that we elected to make our way through the
_table-d'hote_, to which we felt that our appetite, unimpaired by tea,
could do full justice. Luxuriously we toyed with _hors-d'oeuvre_,
while the orchestra patriotically intimated that ours is a Land of
Hope and Glory; blissfully we consumed our soup, undeterred by
repeated reminders of the distance to Tipperary. It was with the fish
that the trouble started.

At the second mouthful it began to dawn upon me that what the band
was playing was the _Brabanconne_. I looked around, and gathered
that I was not alone in the realisation of that fact; for one by one
my fellow-diners struggled hesitatingly to their feet, and stood in
awkward reverence while the National Anthem of our brave Belgian
Allies was in course of execution. I looked at Helen, and Helen
looked at me, and we both tried not to look too regretfully at our
plates as we also adopted the prevailing pose. Not one note of that
light-hearted anthem did the orchestra miss, and when it was over the
warmth in our hearts almost compensated for the coldness of our
fish. We decided to jump at once to the _entree_.

Whatever else may be said of the _Marseillai