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."