And that reminded her, could I tell her where she could write to in London for some Loop Canvas at a penny a yard? Patricia wanted to make some slippers for a young man friend of hers who was at the front, and sweetly pretty too, with forget-me-nots all over; but it said you must have penny Loop Canvas. She had asked for it in Chepstow, but they had never heard of it, the cheapest they had was 1_s._ 4¾_d._, and no loops in it at that. But, of course, you could get everything in London. I had never heard of the canvas myself (and I thought I knew most that was going!), but in any case, she wouldn’t get any canvas at 1_d._ a yard now, I told her; she had evidently got hold of some very old directions. No, she hadn’t; it was in last week’s _Home Snippets_, and she got the periodical out from among an assortment of similar data under the horse-hair sofa squab, to show me. There, under the heading— “A DAINTY COSY-COMFORT FOR YOUR BOY IN THE TRENCHES,” it described how to make a pair of wool-work slippers, commencing with “Get a yard of Penelope canvas.” Then Mrs. Jones was uneasy about her step-daughter, Kathleen, who was in service near Chepstow. “The food’s all right; but the lady isn’t what I call a good wife—never thinks of brushing her husband’s best clothes and putting them away for him of a Monday morning, and yet I’ve never once missed doing that since I married Jones. And I assure you, when I married him, he hadn’t a darned sock to his back. I’m sorry Kathleen hasn’t a better example before her, for she’s inclined to be flighty. She’s got a week’s holiday next month, and nothing will do but she must go and visit her cousin, who is working at munitions in Cardiff. I say to her, ‘Cardiff’s a nasty noisy place; why don’t you go and visit your Aunt Lizzie at Penglyn, she’s so worried she can hardly hold her head up some days, and cries from morning till night; and would be thankful to have someone to talk things over with; or your father’s Cousin Ann at Caerleon, they’ve had a sight of trouble there, and never see a soul nor go out of the house from week end to week end; they’d love to have you.’ But no, it’s Cardiff she wants,” and Mrs. Jones sighed at the unaccountable taste of one-and-twenty! “Ah, no one knows what an anxiety that girl’s been to me,” went on the buxom, good-natured woman, who in reality never makes a trouble of anything, and has been a real mother to Kathleen. “I sometimes wonder why I married her father! But there, I will say it looks better on your tombstone to have ‘The beloved wife of,’ rather than plain Martha Miggins (as I was), all unbelongst to no one, as it were.” Don’t imagine for a moment that this implied matrimonial divergence on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, for a more contented couple you couldn’t find in the village. It is merely the polite way we have, locally, of discounting our blessings, lest we should seem to be flaunting our happiness in the face of less fortunate people.