My dear mother’s health gave me some anxiety at this time, and I did not spend much of my leisure in visiting: but London was, of course, easily accessible, and I went up a good deal to theatres, dinner-parties, and dances. Dancing had become a simpler matter since my school days, and you could go through an evening quite creditably without knowing anything besides the dear old two-step. Balls still did not ordinarily last beyond four in the morning: we were early birds then, and not only the business offices but many even of the larger shops were open by eleven: we had to get some sleep! There was never any difficulty for me in securing partners: the hostesses of the time were all bemoaning the fact that none of the young women seemed to dance nowadays: “My dear,” Mrs. Drake[4] used to say, “I wish you’d known my dancing-room twenty years ago! Young women used to be really active then, and thought nothing of spending an evening dancing after they’d been motoring or golfing all day. But now they’ve all become bears, my dear, positive bears.” But in truth it was not, as I well knew, merely the pressure of other enjoyments that made us women reluctant to appear in the ball-room. There was already a strong feeling that the old system of “partners” was degrading to our sex, and it was only when the new “catch-as-catch-can” movements were introduced from America that we felt woman had attained her true dignity. Drawing-rooms in those days (for we still had “drawing-rooms”) looked very different from our boudoirs, chiefly because it had gone quite out of fashion to have pictures on the walls. Nobody, except a few die-hards, dared to be _fin de siècle_ enough to hang the old representation-pictures, which we were taught to regard as only fit for chocolate-boxes: whereas the Futurist pictures—well, one did not want to be Puritan about it, but there were the servants to think of. The stove-place, owing to the necessity of having a chimney, still stood against one wall of the room, a very inconvenient arrangement, since only a few people could warm their hands at the same time. The electrics, though often concealed with shades, were still visible: lighting by radiance did not come in till much later. Meal-times were very early, judged by our standards: luncheon seldom happened after two, or dinner after nine. The craze for bridge and poker had almost died down by the time of which I write: after our strenuous days we felt that intellectual games were out of place, and the reign of “plonk,” “oogle” and other games of chance was already beginning. Out of doors, tennis had nearly come to its own, although only the larger houses at that time had been roofed over for courts, and ordinary folk had often to travel some distance for a game.