to think of grammar and that, I should never get on to tell you what I
am doing here, so do, dear Mamma, try and bear it bravely. Well,
everybody came down to breakfast yesterday in a hat, and every one was
late--that is, every one who came down at all, the rest had theirs
upstairs.

[Sidenote: _The Cricket Match_]

The cricket began, and it was really a bore. We sat in a tent, and all
the nice men were fielding (it is always like that), and the married
lot sat together, and talked about their clothes, and Lady Doraine read
a book. She is pretty too, but has big ears. Her husband is somewhere
else, but she does not seem to miss him; and the Rooses told me her
hair used to be black, and that they have not a penny in the world, so
I think she must be clever and nice to be able to manage her clothes so
well. They are perfectly lovely, and I heard her say her maid makes
them.

Miss La Touche happened to be next me, so she spoke to me, and said my
hat was "too devey for words" (the blue one you got at Caroline's); and
by-and-by we had lunch, and at lunch Lord Valmond came and sat by me,
and so Mrs. Smith did too, and she gushed at me. He seemed rather put
out about something--I suppose it was having to field all the
time.--and she talked to him across me, and she called him "Harry"
lots of times, and she always says things that have another meaning.
But they all do that--repeat each other's Christian names in a
sentence, I mean--just like you said that middle-class people did when
you were young, so I am sure everything must have changed now.

Well, after lunch, all the people in the county seemed to come; some of