Nothing in all the various confused and contradictory orders issued by the capricious and neurotic “Dora” gave such unalloyed festive delight as the edict against “hoarding.” It opened the door to all the little spies and scandal-mongers of every neighbourhood, especially to the provincial types of these gentry, who are always of a more inquisitive and slanderous disposition than the same class found in large cities, for the reason that they have little other excitement beyond the gratifying stimulus of inquiring into their neighbours’ affairs and meddling with them if they can. The “Hoarding” order suited them down to the ground and set them all on the alert, peering into windows and peeping through open doors--following their “dear friends” into shops and taking eager notes of their purchases, till every eye grew hard and sharp as a gimlet, and every nose as pointed as the beak of a crow. It was astonishing and amusing to watch the alteration for the worse in the looks of men and women during this period; the theory of “psycho-suggestion” was amply verified in the visible fact that people who were previously open-faced and good-natured were almost unrecognisable in the sudden “squeezing-in” of their features to the ugly furrows of suspicion and meanness. “Some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them,” says the sapient Malvolio; and I frankly admit that I felt myself to be entirely in the latter category when I became a sort of modern heroine in a new version of _Much Ado About Nothing_, in the precincts of Stratford-on-Avon itself, under the sacred ægis of the Immortal Bard. A real stage was set for me, with the real “city officers Dogberry and Verges”--in fact “the whole dissembly appeared.” I was summoned for “hoarding” sugar. In plain truth I have never “hoarded” anything--not even money, as the town of Stratford-on-Avon has sufficient reason to know. I have never even had the careful housekeeper’s habit of a “store-cupboard”--my house being destitute of such lock-up conveniences, wherefore we have found it best always to order what is wanted from week to week, paying for it likewise from week to week and incurring no debts. In the affair of the sugar I could not procure enough to obey the commands set upon me by the Food Production and other Government Departments. Correspondence with Mr. Prothero had impressed upon me that there was a shortage of all foodstuffs, especially butter, and it was represented to me that every householder growing their own fruit should make as much jam as possible to replace the butter. That year (1917) was a wonderful fruit year; in my own garden, not an “orchard” by any means or abundantly stocked, there was gathered nearly a thousand pounds dead-weight of fruit. Some of it we sold--much of it we gave away--the rest had either to be wasted or preserved. “Shortage of foodstuffs” necessitated its preservation. Our local surveyor, though obliging, could not supply his customers with