There was that last unfortunate Sunday, for instance. It was the 27th April, and Monica and I awoke at four o’clock. We peeped out of the bedroom window just as the dawn was coming. The London garden had all the glamour of the woods at home, and there in the half light we could see the six or seven trees with bluebells growing round—a mist of blue, enchanting, adorable, divine. The scent blew across the grass and the birds called us. We slipped downstairs and ran over the delicious cool lawn into that lovely blue light at the foot of the trees. We gathered handfuls of blossoms and ferns all drowned with dew. We went quite mad with the call of the spring, and danced, for I thought I heard distant music. It may have been only a blackbird; could it have been the pipes of Pan? Anything was possible that morning. We got back, as we thought unseen, stole some scones and milk, and as we tumbled into bed again Monica swore she heard the cuckoo, but I’m certain it was only the clock on the stairs, because this ’Bird’ ooed before it cucked! Then the same day I behaved badly in church. Of course, the general behaviour of the sons and daughters of the clergy is always more unseemly than that of other people’s children. Daddy says it’s because they’re so frightfully handicapped in having the clergy for their fathers. But that day two such absurd things happened. I believe even St Paul with his love of decency and order would have been obliged to smile, while Peter, of course, would have giggled. Monica passed me a bit of paper shortly after we arrived, on which was written the mystic message: ’Eyes right. Psalm 57, verse 5. She will remember.’ I looked to the right, and seated in the pew immediately in front of us was a spinster of uncertain age in a smart blue toque, in the hollow crown of which lay a complete set of false teeth with an unholy smile still lingering about them. I suppose the poor dear had put them on her hat to remind her to put them in her mouth. I collapsed into weak giggles, which increased when I looked up the Psalm we were about to sing, which contained the verse: ’Whose teeth are spears and arrows.’ I am afraid I must confess I didn’t attempt to follow the service, I simply lived for verse 5. Sure enough, as Monica had predicted, ’she remembered.’ She was singing away lustily, ’And I lie even among the children of men that are set on fire whose——’ then a violent start, a wild clutch at the toque, and a dash down the aisle. The churchwarden, who thought she was ill, followed her into the porch with a glass of water.