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brick a tremendous whack with it. Nothing happened, so I turned it over and tried the other side. Again nothing happened, except that a small piece chipped off and flew into my eye. By this time my blood was up, and I went and got the axe out of the tool shed. Laying the brick down, I raised the axe above my head with both hands, and delivered a stunning blow, which might have been effective if it had not missed its mark and buried itself deeply in the ground.
    â€˜What
are
you doing, Henrietta?’ said Lady B, who often walks into our garden in the afternoons to give me a word of cheer.
    â€˜Breaking bricks in half,’ I said breathlessly.
    â€˜But, my dear, that’s quite the wrong way to do it,’ said Lady B. ‘All you have to do is just to tap it with a trowel, like this.’
    â€˜Exactly,’ I said, after she had made several abortive attempts, and I returned to my brick with redoubled fury. I whacked and banged and scored several directs hits, as well as some near misses, while Lady B uttered little cries of encouragement, but apart from the fact that we both gotlittle chips in our eyes, and the brick soon ceased to look like a brick, nothing happened. Then the axe broke, and we went indoors and had tea.
    Next day I got a professional bricklayer to come and finish the job for me. It took him about ten minutes.
    When the gardener came again, he inspected the new path. I could see he was disgusted to find the job so neatly done. ‘Woman’s work,’ he said scornfully, trying to raise a brick with the toe of his boot.
    â€˜Looks nice, doesn’t it?’ I said smugly.
    â€˜Where be axe gone to?’ said the gardener suspiciously.
    â€˜Gone to be sharpened,’ I said.
    Always your affectionate Childhood’s Friend,
    H ENRIETTA

 
    Â 
    Â 
    14 April, 1943
    M Y D EAR R OBERT
    Now the evenings are longer, Lady B often comes up to our house for a chat after dinner. She is the only person Charles doesn’t mind coming to the house at that time, because he knows he can go on reading the paper and she won’t mind if he grunts. Indeed, Lady B has remarked more than once that she likes Charles’s grunts, as they remind her of her own happy married life. She even goes so far as to say that she understands what they mean, but I think that is just vain boasting on her part.
    The night before last she arrived with her knitting. ‘If you get up, Charles, I’ll never come here again,’ she said, and Charles, with a thankful sigh, abandoned the half-heartedattempt he was making to struggle out of his chair, and disappeared behind
The Times.
    â€˜There’s your chair,’ I said.
    Lady B hitched up her skirt at the back and sat down carefully. ‘One of the major troubles of my life just now,’ she said earnestly, ‘is trying to keep my two good skirts from bulging at the back.’
    â€˜I always wear a very, very old one in the house.’
    â€˜So I see,’ said Lady B. ‘What has made you so tired tonight, Henrietta?’, for I was playing patience, and Lady B knows that I only do that when I am too exhausted to do anything else.
    â€˜Bindweed.’
    â€˜Ah! I hope you admired me in the “Wings for Victory” procession?’
    â€˜I thought you looked very fine, and I was glad to see that you had the courage to carry an umbrella.’
    â€˜People were rather unkind about it at first, but they were glad to shelter under it when that shower began. Henrietta, I don’t want to interfere with your patience, but if you don’t put that Knave on the Queen I shall go raving mad.’
    I put the Knave on the Queen. ‘The people they really ought to have in processions, and when the great Peace Procession comes I hope they will, are the Shoppers.’
    There was a grunt from Charles and
The Times
quivered slightly. ‘Charles and I couldn’t agree with you more,’ said Lady B.