is simply _precious_ in crossing
roads.

Speaking of those who've given all their motors to the State and those
who haven't, a new social danger has bobbed up for the latter--the
chauffeuse. She's got to be reckoned with, dearest. In threatening the
single lives of people's eldest sons she's leaving even the eternal
chorus-girl down the course, and in releasing _one_ man for the Front
she's quite likely to capture _another who counts considerably more!_

The Ramsgates thought they'd got a perfect jewel of a chauffeuse--smart,
businesslike, knew town well, knew when she might exceed the speed limit
and when she mightn't, thoroughly understood her car and so on. And then
one day Pegwell came back from the Front on sick leave. As soon as he
was well enough he went for a drive every day. Someone said to his
mother, "I wonder you trust your boy out alone with that chauffeuse of
yours." And Elizabeth Ramsgate _laughed_ at the caution. "I only wish
Thompson were more dangerous," she said. "There's safety in numbers, and
if she were younger and prettier perhaps she'd switch Peggy's thoughts
off that fearful Dolly de Colty of the Incandescent."

And so Pegwell went on with his drives, and one day they were out so
long that his mother was anxious, and when at last they came back she
said, "Oh, Thompson, you've been driving Lord Pegwell too far; he's not
strong enough for such long drives; it was very inconsiderate of you,
Thompson." And the chauffeuse tossed up her chin and cried, "Not so much
'Thompson,' please!" And Pegwell chipped in with, "This is Lady Pegwell,
mother, and in future she'll drive no one but me!"

Popsy, Lady Ramsgate, is even more furious about it than his parents.
"Ramsgate and Elizabeth have behaved like fools," she said to me
yesterday; "they don't know their world in the least, though they've
lived in it nearly half a century. What if the minx _wasn't_
particularly young and pretty. A chauffeuse is a novelty, and when
you've said that you've said everything."

Your Blanche is enormously busy just now editing a book that's going to
be the sensation of the Spring crop of volumes. You're aware, of course,
_m'amie_, that if a book's even to be _looked_ at now it must be either
Somebody's Memories of Everybody Else or Somebody's Experiences in an
Enemy Country. Well, and so Stella Clackmannan and I, in the hostel we
run for poor dears who've lost their situations abroad and have no
friends to go to on com