Improbable Louis-Seize furniture was pushed back against white and gold and silk-panelled walls. Gilt-legged tables and chairs were piled with rolls of bleached and unbleached cotton, feverishly pink flannelette, and scarlet flannel; or littered with cut-out parts of garments, some of which (judging from the confusion and clamour about them) had got badly mixed. On the garland-embroidered curtains of primrose yellow silk were pinned placards announcing patriotic meetings of women who wished to assist or form recruiting agencies; or appeals from the Red Cross Society or the Prince of Wales' Fund. Rugs had been rolled up, and the polished parquet floor was strewn with shirt buttons, reels of cotton, and torn papers of pins. Scissors hid among scraps of waste material, and on request were searched for by very young girls whose apparent business was to supply the sewing-machines with cut-out and basted-up garments, to fold and stack the finished things according to kind, and to knit wildly at intervals on immense stockings with singularly long feet which clearly could suit no one but Santa Claus. As, according to my stepmother, all the ladies of the guild were "top-wave swells," I'd expected to find the fair brigade of volunteers exquisitely dressed in the latest Paris fashions of "before the war." But no! They had invented a still later fashion of their own. It was to be frumpish. The smart thing for the women of Great Britain was to have their hair done plainly, with an angelic effect of putting patriotism before vanity, and having no time to spend on self. No money, either, to judge from their frocks! Where they had raked up their old clothes, I can't imagine. There were skirts and blouses in that transformed drawing-room in which, a few weeks ago, their wearers would not have gone out to burn down a church or to be dragged to prison. Still, I must say that most of the wearers contrived to look very distinguished, even those at the sewing-machines, who had got tousled as children do over unaccustomed schoolroom tasks. No one had on any jewellery except Kitty, Mrs. Dalziel, and Milly, and one or two others who were also evidently Americans not required to sacrifice everything for Great Britain's sake. They, with their pretty dresses, their rings and earrings and strings of large, glistening pearls, were like gay flowers in a kitchen garden. Kitty, fat and fashionable, and Di, slim and elaborately frumpish, came to meet me with pajama legs in their hands. They didn't trouble to take off their thimbles, and I thought they seemed far from being ashamed of the needle pricks on their fingers.