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By Root 8885 0

é. If she was not "in town" by ten-thirty, she fretted. With her hive-shaped basket under her elbow, Portia in her wake, she punted happily, slowly up and down the High Street, crossing at random, quite often going back on her tracks. Women who shop by telephone do not know what the pleasures of buying are. Rich women live at such a distance from life that very often they never see their money—the Queen, they say, for instance, never carries a purse. But Mrs. Heccomb's unstitched morocco purse, with the tarnished silver corners, was always in evidence. She paid cash almost everywhere, partly because she had found that something happens to bills, making them always larger than you think, partly because her roving disposition made her hate to be tied to one set of shops. She liked to be known in as many shops as possible, to receive a personal smile when she came in. And she had by this time managed things so well that she was known in every Seale shop of standing. Where she had not actually bought things, she had repeatedly priced them. She did admit herself tied to one butcher, one dairy because they sent: Mrs. Heccomb did not care for carrying meat, and the milk supply for a household must be automatic. Even to these two shops she was not wholly faithful: she had been known to pick up a kidney here and there, some new shade of butter, a crock of cream.

To Portia, who had never seen a purse open so often (when you live in hotels there is almost nothing to buy), Mrs. Heccomb's expenditure seemed princely—though there was often change out of a florin. When Mrs. Heccomb had too many pennies, she would build them up, at the next counter she came to, into pillars of twelve or six, and push them across cautiously. Where she paid in coppers only, she felt she had got a bargain: money goes further when you do not break into silver, and any provident person baulks at changing a note. Everything was bought in small quantities, exactly as it was wanted day by day. Today, for instance, she made the following purchases:

One cake of Vinolia for the bathroom,

Half a dozen Relief nibs,

One pot of salmon and shrimp paste (small size),

One pan scrubber of crumpled metal gauze,

One bottle of Bisurated Magnesia tablets (small size ),

One bottle of gravy browning,

One skein of "natural" darning wool (for Dickie's vests),

One electric light bulb,

One lettuce,

One length of striped canvas to re-seat a deck chair,

One set of whalebones to repair corsets,

Two pair of lamb's kidneys,

Half a dozen small screws,

A copy of The Church Times.

She also made, from a list of Daphne's, and out of a special ten shilling note, a separate set of purchases for the party tonight. Portia bought a compendium—lightly ruled violet paper, purple lined envelopes—and nine pennyworth of three-halfpenny stamps. Infected by the sea air with extravagance, she also bought a jade green box to keep a toothbrush in, and a length of red ribbon for a snood for tonight.

Now Mrs. Heccomb had gone to the house agent's for her annual consultation about the summer let. Probably no other householder in Seale began to discuss the summer let so early. The fact was that Daphne and Dickie objected each year more strongly to turning out of Waikiki for the three best months. But their father had built the house for summer letting, and his widow adhered to this with a touch of piety. In July, August, September she took her painting things with her and moved on a round of visits to relatives: meanwhile, Daphne and Dickie were put out to board with friends, In view of the objections they always raised, she liked to get the let clinched well in advance, then to let them know of it as a fait accompli. But she was made sad, when she went to the house agent's, by the sense of conspiring against Daphne and Dickie.

So she did not take Portia with her to witness this dark act, but sent her to the Corona to book a table. The Corona was very full at this hour; the fashionable part was upstairs, looking down on the High Street. Only outsiders drank their coffee downstairs. And how bright it Was up here, with the smell of hot roasting coffee, the whicker of wicker chairs. A stove threw out roaring heat: sun streamed through the windows, curdling the smoke of a few bold cigarettes. Ladies waiting for ladies looked through back numbers of the Tatler and Sketch. Dogs on leads wound themselves round the table legs. Paper tulips in vases, biscuits in coloured paper on the tile-topped tables struck bright notes. The waitresses knew everyone. It was so much gayer than London