t than the geranium
blooms are likely to be. I shouldn't object so much to ordinary cats,
but I do complain of having a congress of vegetarian cats in my garden;
they must be vegetarians, my dear, because, whatever ravages they may
commit among the sweet pea seedlings, they never seem to touch the
sparrows; there are always just as many adult sparrows in the garden on
Saturday as there were on Monday, not to mention newly-fledged additions.
There seems to have been an irreconcilable difference of opinion between
sparrows and Providence since the beginning of time as to whether a
crocus looks best standing upright with its roots in the earth or in a
recumbent posture with its stem neatly severed; the sparrows always have
the last word in the matter, at least in our garden they do. I fancy
that Providence must have originally intended to bring in an amending
Act, or whatever it's called, providing either for a less destructive
sparrow or a more indestructible crocus. The one consoling point about
our garden is that it's not visible from the drawing-room or the smoking-
room, so unless people are dinning or lunching with us they can't spy out
the nakedness of the land. That is why I am so furious with Gwenda
Pottingdon, who has practically forced herself on me for lunch on
Wednesday next; she heard me offer the Paulcote girl lunch if she was up
shopping on that day, and, of course, she asked if she might come too.
She is only coming to gloat over my bedraggled and flowerless borders and
to sing the praises of her own detestably over-cultivated garden. I'm
sick of being told that it's the envy of the neighbourhood; it's like
everything else that belongs to her--her car, her dinner-parties, even
her headaches, they are all superlative; no one else ever had anything
like them. When her eldest child was confirmed it was such a sensational
event, according to her account of it, that one almost expected questions
to be asked about it in the House of Commons, and now she's coming on
purpose to stare at my few miserable pansies and the gaps in my sweet-pea
border, and to give me a glowing, full-length description of the rare and
sumptuous blooms in her rose-garden."

"My dear Elinor," said the Baroness, "you would save yourself all this
heart-burning and a lot of gardener's bills, not to mention sparrow
anxieties, simply by paying an annual subscription to the O.O.S.A."

"Never heard of it," said Elinor; "what is it?"

"Th