In London the _corps diplomatique_ is more _diplomatique_ than _corps_. Just a swarm of warring atoms, some of them very _charming_, all of them invaluable if a man fails you at the last moment--a word by telephone to the Chancery: "Two men; I _must_ have them; golf and bridge; the 4.20 from Waterloo; not to bring a servant." ... And so on and so forth. Indispensable for entertaining on Connie Maitland's lines. They are so nice and tractable; but worse than useless if you go officially, as it were, for a whispered _word_ of guidance. As witness Mrs. Sawyer... I cannot remember where I first met her; probably at Lady Maitland's... Sooner or later one meets everybody there; and, with all respect to dear Connie, I, personally, should not mind if some of her protégés came a little later and left a little sooner ... before I had time to be involved, I mean. It is all this craze for collecting money and, incidentally, carving a _niche_ for oneself as the great organizer. One pictures Connie standing blindfold over a map of England and spearing it ruthlessly with a knitting-needle. "I, Constance Maitland," you can hear her saying, "ordain that _here_ and _here_ and _here_ I will erect hospitals, libraries and wash-houses." ... Whether the locality likes it or not, as it were. If the needle pierces Grasmere, so much the worse for Grasmere. It shall have its hospital--in mid-lake, regardless of the _needless_ additional expense. I _am_ serious about that, because I feel that, if Connie spent more judiciously, she would not have to appeal so persistently; some of us _did_ contrive to keep the machine running even before my Lady Maitland descended upon us... It does not affect me much, because I am never able to contribute more than a trifle; one cannot undertake her new charities indiscriminately without doing an injustice to the old. Others are more happily placed, and my only quarrel with Connie is that I must either drop her or else consent to embrace _all_ her new friends. This Mrs. Sawyer, for instance...