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206 cence of Opposition in Resolution. , associating Ireland whole-heartedly with it, made practical suggestion, that, instead of lending Belgium ten millions as proposed, we should hand the money over to her as a free gift, an instalment of a just debt.

Business done.-More Emergency Bills advanced by stages. Ominous hint of fresh taxation dropped by.



"We are not satisfied with Our moustache; it seems to need support on the Eastern side.'





Park Lane.

,―There was a big party of us at the Clackmannan's Scotch place, Blairbinkie, when all these fearful things began to happen―and now where are we all? The Flummery boys and ever so many more of the party are at the front with their regiments. The Duke of Clackmannan is at the head of the the Clackmannan Yeomanry. Norty's gone off to help take care of the East coast, and it's lucky to have him helping to protect it and keep watching, for if there's anybody who could see things coming sooner than anybody else it's Norty!

Stella, Beryl, Babs and your Blanche are all back in Town, and when we're not taking lessons in nursing we're sewing at flannel. I make Yvonne do my hair quite, quite plainly, and I'm giving my jewels to the country. I've already given my dear collar of pearls. I gave that first because I love it best of all my jewels, because it can never be replaced, and because pearls suit me better than any other stone.

All our first fingers are covered with pricks and look immensely horrid, but we glory in it and won't even put and cold cream on them! As I said yesterday afternoon, when we were all sewing away at flannel, if any woman, I don't care who, offered me her hand and I saw that the first finger was smooth I'd refuse to take it! Beryl must needs weigh in with, "But, my dear Blanche, she wouldn't offer you her left hand! It's the left forefinger that gets punished in needlework." "The principle is the same," I answered coldly. "And besides, some people are left-handed." Beryl has decent qualities, I know, and one doesn't want to find fault with anyone just now, but she was always like that―and her hemming, dearest!

Babs is wild to go to the front, but I say she’d be only a nuisance until she knows more about nursing. Someone told me the other day, à propos of untrained women going to the front and hindering instead of helping, that during the last war a poor dear in one of the hospitals had his hair parted fifty times in an hour by fifty different people, and nearly got brain-fever.

There was a man in the party at Blairbinkie who, before we were at war, talked fervidly of what he should do for his country if trouble came. I had not liked Hector Swankington the least little but before that, but when he said that, in the event of war, he would raise a troop at his own expense, call it "Swankington's Horse" and lead it himself "wherever the fighting was hottest," I thought I'd not done him justice. So I listened to him and approved and encouraged the plan. And then the storm burst and we all scattered. The other morning I met him in the Park when I was taking my early walk. He asked if I would dine with him some evening at the "Iridescent," and I said it was not a time for dining at restaurants. "No," he agreed, "it certainly isn't now all the French cooks are gone; and what an idiotic idea this is about reducing the number of courses at dinner! Silly rot, I call it!"

I ignored this and asked, "What about 'Swankington's Horse'?"

"Oh! that’s all off," he said huffily. "I wrote to the authorities about raising the troop, asked what State recognition I should get, and enclosed a drawing of the hat I meant to wear as leader—a ripping scheme, turned up at one side and with a bunch of feathers. All the answer I got was a few brief words of acknowledgment and a request to set about it at once and report myself somewhere or other. Not a word of the State recognition I was to receive, and the drawing of the hat returned with 'Not approved' scrawled across it. So I've chucked the whole business. And now don't let us talk of that any more!"

I gave him my freezing look (you've never seen my freezing look, dearest—it's terrible!) and I said with a little calm deadly manner that I very, very seldom use, "I've no wish to talk to you of that—or of anything else—ever again." And I left him.

The party at Blairbinkie that scattered almost as soon as it assembled was by way of being a farewell to the old place, for the Clackmannans had virtually sold it to a 