points to meatless days?
Here we were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Miss Primkins, an elderly lady who lives by herself (or at least with Rehoboam, her cat) in a pretty little cottage further down the hill. Miss Primkins has been hard hit by the War, but no matter how she has to skimp and save in other ways, she never relaxes her work for the wounded.
And it was about her contribution to Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild that she came up to consult me. Not that we started there straight away—of course not. We talked about the shortage of sugar, and the high cost of boots, and the scarcity of chicken food, and the price of meat, and the difficulty of knowing how to feed Rehoboam adequately and yet in strict accordance with official regulations, and the colour of the bread, and “what are we coming to,” and other topical matters like that. Then, when I had pressed Miss Primkins several times to stay to our midday meal, and she had as many times assured me that she must not stay another minute, grateful though she was for my kind invitation, as she had put on the potatoes to boil before she came out, she produced (in an undertone) a paper parcel from her bag, and with much hesitation explained that she wanted advice on a private matter.
I was all attention.
Undoing the paper, she displayed what looked like a round bolster case made of pink and blue striped flannelette. As she held it up for inspection, it “flared” at the top (to use a dressmaker’s term) with merely a small round opening at the bottom.
I glanced it over as intelligently as I knew how, and then inquired what it was.
“It’s a pyjama for a soldier,” she murmured modestly, in a very low voice. “I’ve cut it exactly by the paper pattern, yet Miss Judson, who saw it yesterday, says she doesn’t believe it’s right. We’ve neither of us ever made one before, so I thought I would run up to you with it; you would be sure to know.”
“Er—h’m—ah—yes,” I said, as light dawned. “It’s all right so far as it goes; but where’s the other leg?”
“The other leg?” she echoed, “there was only one in the pattern.”