"No," said Joan kindly but firmly. "You don't quite grasp the situation. I want to do something. I can't make shirts or knit comforters. I've tried and failed. My shirts look like pillow-cases, and anything more comfortless than my comforters I couldn't imagine. I wouldn't ask a beggar to wear an article I had made, much less an Absent-Minded Beggar."
"What about that tie you knitted for me last Christmas?" I said.
"Yes," said Joan; "what about it? That's what I want to know. You haven't worn it once."
It was true, I hadn't. The tie in question was an attempt to hybridise the respective colour-schemes of a tartan plaid and a Neapolitan ice.
"That," I explained, "is because I've never had a suit which would set it off as it deserves to be set off. However, if I can't help I won't hinder you. I only came in to say that I had done the second hole in two. I thought you would like to know I had beaten bogey." And I retired, taking with me the little heap of tobacco and the hollow tube of paper.
When I reached the seclusion of the mulberry-tree I found that the paper had become ungummed, so I placed the tobacco in it and succeeded after a while in rolling it up. The result, though somewhat attenuated, was recognisably a cigarette. I lit it, and when I had finished coughing I came to the conclusion that if only I could induce Joan to present her gift to the German troops instead of to our Tommies it would precipitate our ultimate triumph. I had to eat several mulberries before I felt capable of proceeding to the third hole. When I got there (in two) I found it occupied by a squadron of wasps while reinforcements were rapidly coming up from a hole beneath the shed. Being hopelessly outnumbered I contented myself with a strategical movement necessitating several stiff rearguard actions.
Joan, growing a little more proficient, had in a couple of days made 500 cigarettes. I had undertaken to despatch them, and one morning she came to me with a neatly-tied-up parcel.
"Here they are," she said; "but you must ask at the Post Office how they should be addressed. I've stuck on a label."
I went out, taking the parcel with me, and walked straight to the tobacconist's.