Her mother says the Vicar is one that holds with Lent, and always has been. Someone else says That reminds her, has anyone heard that old Mr. Small passed away last night? We all agree that eighty-six is a great age. Mrs. L. says that on her mother’s side of the family, there is an aunt of ninety-eight. Still with us, she adds. The aunt’s husband, on the other hand, was gathered just before his sixtieth birthday. Everyone says, You can’t ever _tell_, not really. There is a suitable pause before we go back to Lent and the Vicar. General opinion that a concert isn’t like a dance, and needn’t—says Mrs. L.—interfere.

On this understanding, we proceed. Various familiar items—piano solo, recitation, duet, and violin solo from Master L.—are all agreed upon. Someone says that Mrs. F. and Miss H. might do a dialogue, and has to be reminded that they are no longer on speaking terms, owing to strange behaviour of Miss H. about her bantams. Ah, says Mrs. S., it wasn’t only _bantams_ was at the bottom of it, there’s two sides to every question. (There are at least twenty to this one, by the time we’ve done with it.)

Sudden appearance of our Vicar’s wife, who says apologetically that she made a mistake in the time. I beg her to take the chair. She refuses. I insist. She says No, no, positively not, and takes it.

We begin all over again, but general attitude towards Lent much less elastic.

Meeting ends at about five o’clock. Our Vicar’s wife walks ‘home with me, and tells me that I look tired. I ask her to come in and have tea. No, she says, no, it’s too kind of me, but she must go on to the far end of the parish. She remains standing at the gate telling me about old Small—eighty-six a great age—till quarter-to-six, when she departs, saying that she cannot _think_ why I am looking so tired.

_February 11th.

Robin writes again about cigarette-cards. I send him all those I have collected, and Vicky produces two which she has obtained from the garden-boy.