EMERGENCY RATIONS.
In our village many disruptions have been wrought by the War, but nothing has ever approached the state of turveydom which came in with the system of daily rations.
Margery brought home the first news of the revolution.
"Most extraordinary thing," she said. "The Joneses have got the two old Miss Singleweeds staying with them."
"What!" I exclaimed, swallowing my ration of mammalia in one astonished gulp. "Why, only two or three days ago Jones told me very privately that the Singleweeds were two of the most interfering, bigoted, cabbage-eating old cats that he had ever come across."
"Cabbage-eating!" repeated Margery thoughtfully. "How stupid we are. That's it, of course."
"What's it?"
"Why, cabbage-eating. The Singleweeds haven't touched meat since I don't know when, so for a consideration of brussels-sprouts and a few digestive biscuits the Joneses will have five pounds of genuine beef to play with."
"Hogs!" I said.
The hospitable influence of the new scheme of rationing spread very rapidly. A few days later we heard that Sir Meesly Goormay, the most self-indulgent and incorrigible egotist in the neighbourhood, had introduced a collection of octogenarian aunts to his household, and, when I was performing my afternoon beat, I was just in time to see the butcher's boy, assisted by the gardener, delivering what looked to be a baron of beef at Sir Meesly's back door. It was an enervating and disgusting spectacle, well calculated to upset the moral of the steadiest special in the local force.
That night at dinner I had a Machiavellian thought.
"Look here," I said, stabbing at a plate of petit pois (1911) and mis-cueing badly, "what about having Uncle Tom to stay for a few weeks?"
"Last time he came," replied Margery, "you said that nothing would induce you to ask him again. You haven't forgotten his chronic dyspepsia, have you?"
"Of course not," I retorted, looking a little pained at such flagrant gaucherie; "but you can't cast off a respectable blood relation because he happens to live on charcoal and hot water."
I delivered an irritable attack on a lentil pudding.
"Right-O," agreed Marjory. "And I'll ask Joan as well. She won't be able to come until Friday, because she's having some teeth extracted on Thursday."
After all Marjory is not altogether without perception.
Dinner over I wrote, in my best style, a short spontaneous invitation to Uncle Tom. Margery wrote a more discursive one to Joan.
"I think we ought to celebrate this," I suggested. "Let's be extravagant."
"All right," said Margery. "What shall it be, champagne or potatoes?"
Two days later I received the following:—
"MY DEAR JAMES,—Thank you very much for your invitation, which I am very pleased to accept. The country, after all, is the proper place for old fogeys like myself, as it is very difficult for them to live up to the present-day bustle of a large city. For the last six months I have been doing odd jobs at a munition factory, which, I must admit, has benefited my health in an extraordinary manner, so much so that I have entirely lost the troublesome dyspepsia I suffered from, and now, you will be glad to hear, I am able to eat like a hunter, as we used to say. Hoping to find you all flourishing on Thursday next, about lunch-time,
"Your affectionate
UNCLE TOM."
Instinctively I took my belt in a hole. Then Margery silently placed this in front of me:—
"DARLING MARGERY,—How perfectly sweet of you! I shall simply love it. I am feeling especially beany as I have just finished with the dentist—usually a hateful person—who found out, after all, that it was not necessary to take out any of my teeth. I adore him. No time for more. Heaps to tell you on Friday,
"Your loving
J.J."
"Hullo! Where are you off to?" I asked, as Margery made for the door.
"Off to? Why, to put our names down on the Singleweeds' waiting list."
I took my belt up another hole and, whistling The Bing Boys out of sheer desperate bravado, made my gloomy way to the potato patch.
Plough Girl. "MABEL, DO GO AND ASK THE FARMER IF WE CAN HAVE A SMALLER HORSE. THIS ONE'S TOO TALL FOR THE SHAFTS."