“I hope you remember what a lot you used to send me last year,” she continued, “and how grateful I always was.” I said I remembered. “Yes,” she sighed. “You set yourself a very good example,” and at that I got up and sacrificed to her, with gladness; because if Delia ever suffers cremation the last whiff of her to float sadly away will be her passion for a rose. There are people who might dissolve in suggestion before I would offer up a single petal, which is deplorable in me, for if you want a thing badly enough to hint for it, you must want it very badly indeed. Nevertheless, I think it a detestable habit, worse than punning; and nothing rouses in me a spirit of fiercer, more implacable opposition than a polite, gentle, well-considered hint. Delia, of course, doesn’t hint, she prods, and you accept her elbow with delight, sharing the broad and conscious humour of it. I am glad Delia dropped in, I want to talk about her; she holds to me so much of the charm of this irresponsible impious little Paradise that we have made for ourselves up here above the clouds and connected by wire with Westminster. A wire is not a very substantial thing, and that, if you leave out Mr. Kipling, is all that attaches us to the rest of the world. If an ill-disposed person, the Mullah Powindah or another, should one day cut it, we might float off anywhere, and be hardly more unrelated to the planet we should lodge upon than we are to our own. The founders of Simla--may they dwell in beatitude for ever--saw their golden chance and took it. Far in and far up they climbed to build it, and not being gods, but only men, they thought well to leave the more obvious forms of misery out of their survey plans. They brought with them many desirable things, not quite enough, but many; poverty and sorrow and age they left at the bottom of the hill. They barred out greed and ruin by forbidding speculation; they warned off the spectre of decrepitude by the “age limit” which sends you after fifty-five to whiten and perish elsewhere. This is an ordinance that many call divine, for want of a better word, but there ought to be a better word. They made it so expensive that the widow in her black takes the first ship to Balham, and so attractive that the widower promptly marries again. But they also arranged with Death that he should seldom show himself upon the Mall, so nobody has rue to wear, even with a difference. From ten to five we compose Blue Books, at least our husbands do; the rest of the time we gallop about on little country-bred ponies, and vigorously dance, even to fifty-four years, eleven months, and thirty days; and with full hearts and empty heads--and this is the consummation of bliss--congratulate ourselves. There are houses where they play games after dinner. I myself before I became the dryadess of a pencil-cedar, have played games after dinner, and felt as innocent and expansive as I did at nine.