“Yes, I’ve brought both my twins. I have had another baby since I saw you last, but she came so suddenly that I haven’t had time to make her any clothes, yet. So I left her. . . . How is your husband?” “Oh, he is very well, thank you. At least he had a nawful cold but Queen Victoria—she’s my godmother, you know—sent him a case of pineapples and that cured it im—mediately. Is that your new servant?” “Yes, her name’s Gwen. I’ve only had her two days. Oh, Gwen, this is my friend, Mrs. Smith.” “Good morning, Mrs. Smith. Dinner won’t be ready for about ten minutes.” “I don’t think you ought to introduce me to the servant. I think I ought to just begin talking to her.” “Well, she’s more of a lady-help than a servant and you do introduce lady-helps, I know, because Mrs. Samuel Josephs had one.” “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,” said the servant, carelessly, beating up a chocolate custard with half a broken clothes peg. The dinner was baking beautifully on a concrete step. She began to lay the cloth on a pink garden seat. In front of each person she put two geranium leaf plates, a pine needle fork and a twig knife. There were three daisy heads on a laurel leaf for poached eggs, some slices of fuchsia petal cold beef, some lovely little rissoles made of earth and water and dandelion seeds, and the chocolate custard which she had decided to serve in the pawa shell she had cooked it in. “You needn’t trouble about my children,” said Mrs. Smith graciously. “If you’ll just take this bottle and fill it at the tap—I mean at the dairy.” “Oh, all right,” said Gwen, and she whispered to Mrs. Jones: “Shall I go and ask Alice for a little bit of real milk?” But someone called from the front of the house and the luncheon party melted away, leaving the charming table, leaving the rissoles and the poached eggs to the ants and to an old snail who pushed his quivering horns over the edge of the garden seat and began to nibble a geranium plate. “Come round to the front, children. Pip and Rags have come.”