Meanwhile, it must be understood that it was rather a small world we lived in. It has been my good fortune to move in various kinds of society, and I will freely confess that it was not till a much later period than this that the important people, the people who will have left their names inscribed on the scroll of history, were the guests of my roof or the habitués of my boudoir. Yet the simple life of the country-side had its charm in those days, a charm not easily recaptured now, when ease of intercommunication has made neighbours strangers, and thrown us into the society of cronies three counties off. I had, of course, my private helico, and had recently learned to drive it myself; and already one thought nothing of driving over to Cambridge for an afternoon call, or up to London for a dinner. But it needed a comfortable income to do this, and they were not days of comfortable incomes. The county squires still kept up the tradition of big nurseries; a family of four or five was by no means unusual even among Protestants. The professional classes were still heavily burdened by the income tax, which was nearly a shilling in the pound, and it was only in very rare cases that they could keep anything more than motors. Our old doctor, though a bachelor, only drove a Rolls-Royce till the day of his death. So we were all herded together within the narrow confines of “the county,” and found, as people no doubt find when they are shipwrecked together on a desert island, that the little handful of acquaintances necessity makes for you are well worth studying; have their own foibles, their own angles, their own little traits of lovableness; that to keep up your own position, and at the same time to keep the peace, among your immediate neighbours demands as much in the way of social tact as holding a _salon_ in Hampstead or entertaining Royalty in Mayfair.