oms as against thirty-nine the previous year."

"In Coronation year there were as many as sixty," put in the aunt, "your
uncle has kept a record for the last eight years."

"Doesn't it ever strike you," continued the niece relentlessly, "that if
we moved away from here or were blotted out of existence our local claim
to fame would pass on automatically to whoever happened to take the house
and garden? People would say to one another, 'Have you seen the Smith-
Jenkins' magnolia? It is a perfect mass of flowers,' or else
'Smith-Jenkins tells me there won't be a single blossom on their magnolia
this year; the east winds have turned all the buds black.' Now if, when
we had gone, people still associated our names with the magnolia tree, no
matter who temporarily possessed it, if they said, 'Ah, that's the tree
on which the Gurtleberrys hung their cook because she sent up the wrong
kind of sauce with the asparagus,' that would be something really due to
our own initiative, apart from anything east winds or magnolia vitality
might have to say in the matter."

"We should never do such a thing," said the aunt.

The niece gave a reluctant sigh.

"I can't imagine it," she admitted. "Of course," she continued, "there
are heaps of ways of leading a real existence without committing
sensational deeds of violence. It's the dreadful little everyday acts of
pretended importance that give the Mappin stamp to our life. It would be
entertaining, if it wasn't so pathetically tragic, to hear Uncle James
fuss in here in the morning and announce, 'I must just go down into the
town and find out what the men there are saying about Mexico. Matters
are beginning to look serious there.' Then he patters away into the
town, and talks in a highly serious voice to the tobacconist,
incidentally buying an ounce of tobacco; perhaps he meets one or two
others of the world's thinkers and talks to them in a highly serious
voice, then he patters back here and announces with increased importance,
'I've just been talking to some men in the town about the condition of
affairs in Mexico. They agree with the view that I have formed, that
things there will have to get worse before they get better.' Of course
nobody in the town cared in the least little bit what his views about
Mexico were or whether he had any. The tobacconist wasn't even fluttered
at his buying the ounce of tobacco; he knows that he purchases the same
quantity of the same sort of to