There was one moment when I feared my jars would have to go in the general rending asunder of domestic life caused by the War, even though I had determined to stick to them as long as I could. But when that “one clear call” came for jam-pots, naturally I couldn’t be a traitor to my country, and I decided the jars at least must go, even though I might perhaps retain the handleless cups and jugs. So I told Abigail to let me know when the grocer called. I interviewed the young lady wearing high white kid boots and an amethyst pendant on her bare chest, who brought my next large consignment of groceries, that had to be bought in order to secure a little sugar. But when she heard that there were jam-jars to go back, she looked at me coldly from the doorstep, and hurriedly pushing her basket further up her arm (lest I should attempt to force them into it, I presume), the Abyssinian gold bracelets clanking the while, haughtily informed me that her motor was for delivery only, not for the cartage of empties, and suggested that I should write the manager and see if he would consent to receive them. I’m only human after all, and naturally any woman’s temperature would rise in the face of such spurning of her free-will offerings. I didn’t write, and I’m using the jam-jars still. The nation doesn’t seem any the worse off—though Virginia points out to me that the War _might_ have ended sooner had I insisted on handing them over; she says every little helps, as is proved by the fact that the very week she put her first 15_s._ 6_d._ into Exchequer Bonds the Government got the first “tank.” At any rate, as I never eat preserves myself, I can still, even with a restricted sugar allowance, enjoy the peculiar pleasure that arises within a woman’s soul when she is occasionally able to say, quite casually as it were, to a friend: “Would you care to have a pot of my new gooseberry and cinnamon jam? They say it’s rather good, though of course—etc.” And the friend replies: “Oh, I should _love_ it, dear; _such_ a treat; that jar of ginger marmalade I took home last time was positively _delicious_. Everyone said—etc.” One favourite item for collection among the cottagers is old bottles, and the stock you will see in some of their outhouses is often most extensive and varied. On one occasion an old man who was doing some odd days’ work for me about the garden, in the absence of the handyman, was deploring the way the rabbits devastated the cabbages. “I’ll get rid on ’em for ’ee if you’ll leave ’em to me!” he assured me. I said I only wished he would, as they are a real plague at times.