e Occasional-Oasis Supply Association," said the Baroness; "it exists
to meet cases exactly like yours, cases of backyards that are of no
practical use for gardening purposes, but are required to blossom into
decorative scenic backgrounds at stated intervals, when a luncheon or
dinner-party is contemplated. Supposing, for instance, you have people
coming to lunch at one-thirty; you just ring up the Association at about
ten o'clock the same morning, and say 'lunch garden'. That is all the
trouble you have to take. By twelve forty-five your yard is carpeted
with a strip of velvety turf, with a hedge of lilac or red may, or
whatever happens to be in season, as a background, one or two cherry
trees in blossom, and clumps of heavily-flowered rhododendrons filling in
the odd corners; in the foreground you have a blaze of carnations or
Shirley poppies, or tiger lilies in full bloom. As soon as the lunch is
over and your guests have departed the garden departs also, and all the
cats in Christendom can sit in council in your yard without causing you a
moment's anxiety. If you have a bishop or an antiquary or something of
that sort coming to lunch you just mention the fact when you are ordering
the garden, and you get an old-world pleasaunce, with clipped yew hedges
and a sun-dial and hollyhocks, and perhaps a mulberry tree, and borders
of sweet-williams and Canterbury bells, and an old-fashioned beehive or
two tucked away in a corner. Those are the ordinary lines of supply that
the Oasis Association undertakes, but by paying a few guineas a year
extra you are entitled to its emergency E.O.N. service."

"What on earth is an E.O.N. service?"

"It's just a conventional signal to indicate special cases like the
incursion of Gwenda Pottingdon. It means you've got some one coming to
lunch or dinner whose garden is alleged to be 'the envy of the
neighbourhood.'"

"Yes," exclaimed Elinor, with some excitement, "and what happens then?"

"Something that sounds like a miracle out of the Arabian Nights. Your
backyard becomes voluptuous with pomegranate and almond trees, lemon
groves, and hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble-
basined fountains, in which chestnut-and-white pond-herons step daintily
amid exotic water-lilies, while golden pheasants strut about on alabaster
terraces. The whole effect rather suggests the idea that Providence and
Norman Wilkinson have dropped mutual jealousies and collaborated t