given twenty guineas for the guild and told that I ought to take the
cheque myself, for I would discover that "it was the busiest people who
could always find time."

We were busy from six-thirty in the morning till ten-thirty at night,
with indigestibly short intervals snatched for meals; but, as the two
angels said, there was always time to do one more thing. On that
principle I contrived to go to Diana's on one of her "afternoons," armed
with the Splatchley cheque and my own knitting, strongly resolved not to
drink any of Sidney Vandyke's tea or eat one of his horrid eclairs.

I was ushered into the house by two powdered footmen far too big for it.
It is a small house for Park Lane, all up and down stairs; but the
drawing-room is of good size; and when a bishop-like butler published my
name at the door, I saw that the room was full of women, young, old, and
middle-aged, seated at sewing-machines, or standing at long tables
cutting out strange-looking shapes from hideous materials.

There were some quaint sights to be seen at "The Haven," rooms being
partitioned off into cubicles; others being turned into dormitories,
nurseries, or refectories for the refugees, who had already begun to
arrive, before things were half ready to receive them. But Diana's smart
new drawing-room in Park Lane presented a far more extraordinary study
in contrasts than anything the middle-class "Haven" could show.

Improbable Louis-Seize furniture was pushed back against white and gold
and silk-panelled walls. Gilt-legged tables and chairs were piled with
rolls of bleached and unbleached cotton, feverishly pink flannelette,
and scarlet flannel; or littered with cut-out parts of garments, some of
which (judging from the confusion and clamour about them) had got badly
mixed. On the garland-embroidered curtains of primrose yellow silk were
pinned placards announcing patriotic meetings of women who wished to
assist or form recruiting agencies; or appeals from the Red Cross
Society or the Prince of Wales' Fund. Rugs had been rolled up, and the
polished parquet floor was strewn with shirt buttons, reels of cotton,
and torn papers of pins. Scissors hid among scraps of waste material,
and on request were searched for by very young girls whose apparent
business was to supply the sewing-machines with cut-out and basted-up
garments, to fold and stack the finished things according to kind, and
to knit wildly at intervals on immense stockings with sin