Free (2/20) Village Diary by Miss Read

to hand, until the right person is encountered, means that the older countryman, more often than not, arrives even more tongue-tied than usual. How much simpler it all was, he will think dazedly, as he stares at the ledgers and typewriters and the man who waits with sheaves of forms in front of him, when he walked round to the kitchen door at the Hall, with his troubles, confident that he'd be home again within half an hour, with his course set plain before him.
    As Miss Clare put it: 'I know it's a great comfort, dear, to feel that one will never starve, and that sickness and madness and death itself are looked after. For an old woman in my position, the welfare state is a blessing. This national health scheme, for instance, has taken a great load off my mind. But I miss the warmth of sympathy—foolish perhaps, but there it is. It did both of us good—the one who told his trouble, and the one who tried to help—for, I suppose, we were both united in overcoming a problem and in sympathy with each other.'
    I suggested that the present system might eventually be better. After all, advice from the Hall might be bad as well as good, depending on the mentality and disposition of the owner at any given time.
    'Yes,' agreed Miss Clare, 'in the long run, I think each man will think out his own problems; but it is going to take him a very long time to realize that the machinery for coping with those personal problems is set up by his own hands. We in a village, my dear, can understand a smallcommunity government—it's not much more than a family affair and we ad appreciate our relationship. But when it comes to a nation—with ministries and councils and departments taking the place of the parish clerk and parish priest and squire—well, naturally, we're a little out of our depth, just at the moment!'
    ***
    I had a wasted morning in Caxley trying to buy a lightweight coat for the summer.
    As I was roaming round the coat department at Williams's, which styles itself 'Caxley's leading store,' followed by an assistant staggering under an armful of coats already rejected by me, I bumped into Amy.
    'You look a wreck!' she said truthfully but unkindly.
    'I am a wreck!' I replied simply, and went on to ted her of my hopeless quest.
    'My dear, we are of the race of Lost Women,' said Amy dramatically. The wilting assistant stopped to listen to any more interesting disclosures. 'Clothes there are-beautiful clothes, magnificent clothes, inspired clothes—for those with thirty-six- or even thirty-eight-inch hips! For the forty-four inches and over there is a good range of comfortable garments, obviously designed by kind-hearted men who take pity on large problem-women. But for us, dear, for you and me—for you, with your forty-two hip measurement—' (she gave me no rime to protest that I was only forty. Amy, in full spate, brooks no interruption).
    'And for me,' she continued, 'with my forty—well, thirty-nine really, but I prefer to be comfortable—what do we get?'
    She waved a hand at the departing assistant who was returning a dozen or so coats to their show-case.
    'Nothing?' I ventured.
    'Nothing!' agreed Amy emphatically. Suddenly, her eye became fixed intently on my red frock that Mrs Moffat had made me.
    'Turn round,' she commanded. 'Hmph! A zip right down to the waist, eh? That accounts for the fit. And that panel over the midriff is cut on the cross, I see. Who made it?'
    I told her that Mrs Moffat designed and made it.
    Amy continued to prowl round me, occasionally peering more closely at a particularly interesting seam. She even started to undo the zip 'to see how the back was faced,' until I protested.
    'She's a marvel,' announced Amy, at length. Now Amy knows about clothes, and is an expert needlewoman as well as an astute buyer of really beautiful garments.
    'Do you think she'd make for me?' she asked.
    I said that I would ask her. I had to go for a fitting in the afternoon for two cotton frocks that she was making.
    'But