I said “No,” because it is inevitable to say “No” when anyone supposes we shall do so-and-so. Of course, when I arrived I wanted the coat, and could not remember having said anything about it. How does Mrs. Simpson meet such a question as “How many evening dresses will you take?” Especially as they always ask just at the moment when one’s whole soul is with a missing pair of silk stockings. I undertook to pack for myself with even more disastrous results. I could think of nothing I wanted to take until the last moment. I said to myself: “Dresses?--I must put them in last. Underclothes?--they will not be back from the wash until to-morrow. Shoes?--yes, they go in first.” I wedged my dressing-table pots and pans between my shoes and boots and then I remembered that I should want to wash next morning, so I took the pots and pans out again and wandered round the room looking for more things to pack. I collected note-paper and books, stamps and a pen-knife, and put them on a remote table while I went to write a note about stopping the newspaper. While I was doing this, Ruth asked me to come and look at something, and, by the time that was done, I felt I had broken the back of the packing business. There were only the clean clothes from the laundry to put in; and my dresses; there did not seem to be anything else. How different from the morning of departure! Then every table in every room swarmed with things which had to go, and my box was already full of boots! By the time all the fat three-cornered things had gone in, the box shut comfortably; but there were no dresses in it and no underclothes. I asked James very gently whether he could take a few small things. “Oh, easily,” he said, “anything you like.” (He now adds “within reason,” when he undertakes to help me.) So I took him just a few small things, such as my writing-case. He said it had an utterly unmanageable figure, but that was because I was taking a lot of unanswered letters to do while we were away. That was all except a tin of biscuits, a bottle of bath salts--I had to get a good-sized one, as we were to be away for some time--a case of tools and my work-basket. Really nothing to what I had managed to fit into my own box; besides, I offered to take some of his shirts in exchange. The carriage was at the door when I ran upstairs to get a pin for my veil, and there, on the dressing-table, I found all the writing things I had collected two days before, my hair-pins, brush and comb, and powder-box. James said they could not all go in his pocket, so I carried them under my arm, intending to repack my dressing-case in the train.