No, the real county families live farther afield. Papa could motor in to business if he liked, but he is a little blasé about motoring and also economical. The petrol and wear and tear cost more than the railway journey. Besides, the train is quicker, and if he is not used to smuts and smells by this time then he ought to be! It is no longer in good taste to conceal the whereabouts of Papa from the idle rich who are able to luxuriate all day amongst the sheep and the ox, and the beagle and the fox, and the bird in the greenwood tree. So many of the best people are in business that it does not matter as it used if we speak about it. The only thing that can make anyone really impossible is to know too many people. You may be silly, malicious, greedy, untruthful, parsimonious or lewd, but you will be a tremendous county dog-fox if you will only assert yourself and be rude enough. But you must be really rude--no half measures--say really smart things about your friends that they won’t like. You will need to take infinite precautions or the wrong people will want to know you, so be very very careful, because it is so dreadfully important that they shouldn’t. It would put an end to everything. Unfortunately for any amusement I might have got out of our new life, James and I were turned over to the county before we arrived. Some indiscreet friend had written to one of the leading authorities on position and told her who James’s uncle was. That was enough; try as I would they were never sincere with me. They sometimes went so far as to say that the things I did were a pity, but that was nothing. What I should have liked would have been to learn their abracadabras and beat them at their own game or else to lose and bob up again somewhere else. To have the victory given into one’s hands is no fun. Still, I learned something by the gasping and choking it cost the poor things to swallow some of my friends, and by their unwilling acceptance of the fact that I did not play games and could not afford to hunt. They told me I should find croquet such a resource. “But I am not resourceful,” I argued with Mrs. Van Dieman. “It gives me so much more pleasure to see you run about and enjoy yourself.” “You don’t need to run at croquet,” she protested, “surely you know better than that, and bridge is a nice quiet game if you are not fond of exercise.” “It is not that I don’t like exercise,” I explained. “I have played leap-frog often and enjoyed it, and I love riding. Escaping from people who ask questions is splendid exercise too; one needs a lot of resource for that!” “Well, come to my party next Thursday,” she said. “You need not play any games; you can sit on the verandah and eat peaches and get as fat as you like.” “Will you promise that your butler won’t come and tell me that the peaches have ‘never come’?” I asked.