‘In Coronation year there were as many as sixty,’ put in the aunt; ‘your uncle has kept a record for the last eight years.’

‘Doesn’t it ever strike you,’ continued the niece relentlessly, ‘that if we moved away from here or were blotted out of existence our local claim to fame would pass on automatically to whoever happened to take the house and garden? People would say to one another, “Have you seen the Smith-Jenkins’ magnolia? It is a perfect mass of flowers,” or else, “Smith-Jenkins tells me there won’t be a single blossom on their magnolia this year; the east winds have turned all the buds black.” Now if, when we had gone, people still associated our names with the magnolia tree, no matter who temporarily possessed it, if they said, “Ah, that’s the tree on which the Gurtleberrys hung their cook because she sent up the wrong kind of sauce with the asparagus,” that would be something really due to our own initiative, apart from anything east winds or magnolia vitality might have to say in the matter.’

‘We should never do such a thing’ said the aunt. The niece gave a reluctant sigh.

‘I can’t imagine it,’ she admitted. Of course, she continued, ‘there are heaps of ways of leading a real existence without committing sensational deeds of violence. It’s the dreadful little everyday acts of pretended importance that give the Mappin stamp to our life. It would be entertaining, if it wasn’t so pathetically tragic, to hear Uncle James fuss in here in the morning and announce, “I must just go down into the town and find out what the men there are saying about Mexico. Matters are beginning to look serious there.” Then he patters away into the town, and talks in a highly serious voice to the tobacconist, incidentally buying an ounce of tobacco; perhaps he meets one or two others of the world’s thinkers and talks to them in a highly serious voice, then he patters back here and announces with increased importance, “I’ve just been talking to some men in the town about the condition of affairs in Mexico. They agree with the view that I have formed, that things there will have to get worse before they get better.” Of course nobody in the town cared in the least little bit what his views about Mexico were or whether he had any. The tobacconist wasn’t even fluttered at his buying the ounce of tobacco; he knows that he purchases the same quantity of the same sort of tobacco every week. Uncle James might just as well have lain on his back in the garden and chattered to the lilac tree about the habits of caterpillars.’

‘I really will not listen to such things about your uncle,’ protested Mrs James Gurtleberry angrily.

‘My own case is just as bad and just as tragic,’ said the niece dispassionately; ‘nearly everything about me is conventional make-believe. I’m not a good dancer, and no one could honestly call me good-looking, but when I go to one of our dull little local dances I’m conventionally supposed to “have a heavenly time,” to attract the ardent homage of the local cavaliers, and to go home with my head awhirl with pleasurable recollections. As a matter of fact, I’ve merely put in some hours of indifferent dancing, drunk some badly made claret cup, and listened to an enormous amount of laborious light conversation. A moonlight hen- stealing raid with the merry-eyed curate would be infinitely more exciting; imagine the pleasure of carrying off all those white Minorcas that the Chibfords are always bragging about. When we had disposed of them we could give the proceeds to a charity, so there would be nothing really wrong about it. But nothing of that sort lies within the Mappined limits of my life. One of these days somebody dull and decorous and undistinguished will “make himself agreeable” to me at a tennis party, as the saying is, and all the dull old gossips of the neighbourhood will begin to ask when we are to be engaged, and at last we shall be engaged, and people will give us butter-dishes and blotting-cases and framed pictures of young women feeding swans. Hullo, Uncle, are you going out?’

‘I’m just going down to the town,’ announced Mr James Gurtleberry, with an air of some importance: ‘I want to hear what people are saying about Albania. Affairs there are beginning to take on a very serious look. It’s my opinion that we haven’t seen the worst of things yet.’

In this he was probably right, but there was nothing in the immediate or prospective condition of Albania to warrant Mrs Gurtleberry in bursting into tears.