CHAPTER III
Chapter III finds the war over and Celia still at it.
"You haven't got that Joke in yet."
She had just read an article of mine called "Autumn in a Country
Vicarage."
"It wouldn't go in there very well," I said.
"It would go in anywhere where there were rats. There might easily be rats in a vicarage."
"Not in this one."
"You talk about 'poor as a church mouse.'"
"I am an artist," I said, thumping my heart and forehead and other seats of the emotions. "I don't happen to see rats there, and if I don't see them I can't write about them. Anyhow, they wouldn't be secular rats, like the ones I made my joke about."
"I don't mind whether the rats are secular or circular," said Celia, "but do get them in soon."
Well, I tried. I really did try, but for months I couldn't get those rats in. It was a near thing sometimes, and I would think that I had them, but at the last moment they would whisk off and back into their holes again. I even wrote an article about "Cooking in the Great War," feeling that that would surely tempt them, but they were not to be drawn….