Free (2/20) Village Diary by Miss Read Page A

I'm having them buttoned down the front,' I told Amy. 'You can't believe how difficult it is for a woman living alone to cope with a zip down the back.'
    'What you want,' said Amy, 'is a husband,' and without pausing to take breath added, 'How's Mr Mawne?'
    I suggested, a trifle tartly, that coffee might restore both of us to our senses, and the question remained unanswered.
    I had been invited to stay to tea at Mrs Moffat's bungalow after my fittings. I found Mrs Finch-Edwards, as handsome and exuberant as when she had taken charge in the infants' room over a year ago, sitting in the trim little drawing-room, while her baby daughter kicked fat legs on the rug at her feet.
    She was an adorable baby, chubby and good-tempered, and Mrs Finch-Edwards had had her christened Althea.
    'And she sleeps right through the night!' Mrs Finch-Edwards assured us. 'My hubby and I don't hear one squeak from six till six the next morning!'
    'You just don't know how lucky you are,' Mrs Moffat answered, as she poured tea. 'Now Linda—' and the conversation became a duet compounded of such phrases as gripe-water, dreadful dummies, picking up, lying on the right side, kapok pillows, down pillows, no pillows—until it was enough to turn an old maid silly.
    Mrs Moffat said that she would be delighted to make dresses for Amy, and I explained that, as she now lived at Bent, just the other side of Caxley and drove her own car, she could come whenever it was convenient for Mrs Moffat to have her. Mrs Finch-Edwards and Mrs Moffat, I know, have high hopes of opening a shop one day, showing dresses that they have designed and made. In time they hope to have a substantial business, with a workroom of first-class sewing girls, while they attend to the designing and organization. They should make a success of such a venture, I feel sure, for they are both energetic, ambitious and particularly gifted at this type of work.
    'I've made several children's frocks for that new shop in Caxley,' Mrs Finch-Edwards told me, 'but of course I can't do much while Althea's so young—but just wait!'
    'Just wait!' echoed Mrs Moffat, and her eyes sparkled as she met the equally enthusiastic glances of her friend across the tea-cups.

    The Caxley Chronicle today published a short article of mine about Lenten customs in Fairacre and other neighbouring parishes. This is my first appearance in the paper, and I must say it all looked very much more impressive in neat newsprint, than it did in pencil in a half-filled spelling-book from school.
    The vicar began this project by showing me accounts in parish magazines of the last century, and Mrs Willet also told me of many interesting things that her father and mother did during Lent. The reaction to my appearance in print has been most amusing, and Mrs Pringle addressed me with something like awe this morning. To be 'in the papers' at all, is something. To be 'in The Paper,' is everything at Fairacre.
    Less welcome were such comments as:
(a) 'It is a real gift.' (The Vicar)
(b) 'I suppose it just flows out.' (Mrs Willet)
(c) 'If it's in you, I suppose it's bound to come out.' (Mr Willet, rather morosely)
(d) 'Wonderful, dear, and so effortless.' (Amy, on the telephone)
    As I had spent six evenings at the dining-room table sitting on a hard chair with my toes twisted round its legs, chewing my pencil to shreds and groaning in much the same anguish as had my class when they composed their recent deathless verse, I found all these comments particularly souring.
    On thinking over Mr Willet's gloomy comment I have come to the conclusion that he looks upon any kind of artistic urge as a sort of poison in the system, which is 'better out than in.' Perhaps this theory is more widely held than we realize, I thought to myself, as I knitted busily up the front of a cardigan this evening; in which case matters become very profound.
    Instead of praising and envying artists, perhaps we should be sorry for them—victims as they are of their