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hat, but the first time I wore it Henry proposed to me. How odd it is that all the nicest men prefer a bad hat to a good one.’
    I said, ‘Yes.’
    â€˜I never thought I’d want to buy a hat out of our Street, but I want that little hat,’ said Lady B, and she heaved a sigh which blurred quite a large patch on the shop window.
    â€˜Buy it,’ I said.
    Lady B turned anxious blue eyes on me. ‘Do you think it would be helping Hitler?’ she said in a low voice.
    â€˜It would help Mathilde’s shop.’
    â€˜It is sometimes very difficult to know what is the Right Thing to do,’ said Lady B, and she sighed again.
    I rubbed the glass with my handkerchief, and we gazed once more in silence at the little black hat. Then I said: ‘If you were to wire the brim of the hat you wore at the Thomson wedding, you could make it very like that one.’
    â€˜But I’d never get a quill that colour. I like the quill.’
    â€˜There are seagulls on the beach,’ I said, ‘and I have some coloured inks.’
    The weather on the day of the party was lovely, and I thought I had never seen the Locals looking so smart and gay, but as soon as we caught sight of the Best Dressed Woman we realised that the one thing we had forgotten to do was to shorten our skirts. This cast a dowdy gloom over the beginning of the party, though people were able to throw it off later and enjoy themselves. Lady B looked a peach in the home-trimmed hat, and personally I thought she left the Best Dressed Woman at the post, but that may be because I had had a hand in the trimming.
    I wore my black London coat, and my fox fur, mercifully preserved from the moth, and the hat I wore last time Ilunched with you at the Savoy Grill. I remember you said you liked it, Robert, and so, according to Lady B, either you are not a nice man, or it is a bad hat. I kept thinking of this, and what fun that lunch had been, and how little real fun there is about these days, and what with these sad thoughts and my usual Party Panic, which attacks me on the doorstep, I arrived at Mrs Savernack’s house in a very low state, and it was all I could do to get myself in at the front door.
    The first thing I did at the party was to tread on a tomato sandwich which Colonel Simpkins had dropped on the floor, and grind it into the carpet with my heel. Drawing back with a cry of dismay, I bumped into the Conductor, who spilt his tea down the back of my coat. The Conductor mopped me up with his handkerchief, and we managed to scrape the tomato sandwich off the floor with the fire shovel without either Mr or Mrs Savernack seeing.
    â€˜And this is our Doctor’s Wife,’ said Mrs Savernack, and I was propelled unwillingly into the Presence.
    â€˜I’m not. I’m Henrietta Brown,’ I said.
    â€˜Yes?’ they said, with gracious Government House smiles.
    â€˜At least, of course I
am
the Doctor’s Wife, but I’m Henrietta Brown too, if you know what I mean. I always think it is rather depressing being called somebody’s wife all the time.’
    The Best Dressed Woman looked at me without sympathy. ‘It has always made me very proud,’ she said simply, and she and the Cabinet Minister exchanged a long, loving smile. After that there was a pause.
    Feeling it was up to me to make a non-committal remark, I asked if they had seen the Savernacks’ garden. They said they had, and that the fruit was magnificent.

    I was propelled unwillingly into the Presence
    I said: ‘We’re going to have a plumper bum crop this year.’ Then Lady B came and led me away.
    Mrs Whinebite arrived late, wearing the Mathilde model, and gave Lady B a very disagreeable look. Mrs Whinebite, who ought always to wear hats trimmed with raffia, and generally does, looked terrible in the Mathilde, and nobody but she and Lady B and I recognised it as a twin.
    Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,
    H