Under this title I refer to a lady whom I will call Mrs. Legion, for
there are many of her all over the country, bless her conservative old
heart. She has been in service as cook or cook-housekeeper most of her
life (she is now getting on in years), and constant preoccupation
with kitchen affairs has somewhat narrowed her outlook, so that the
circumvention of the butcher, whose dominant idea (she believes) is to
provide her with indifferent joints, is more to her than the defeat of
HINDENBURG; and so far as she is concerned the main theatre of the
War is neither Europe nor the Atlantic, but the coal merchant's yard,
which disgorges its treasure so grudgingly. Not only is her first
thought for her cooking, in order--the transition to her second
thought is automatic--that her employer or employers may be
comfortable; but it is her last thought too.

With such singleness of purpose to crystallize her, she cannot
absorb even the gravest of warnings; not from unwillingness or stupid
obstinacy, but from sheer inability to grasp any novelty. That her
beloved master and mistress--either or both--should not have the
best of everything and plenty of it is, at this advanced stage in
her career, unthinkable. Even though she read it in print she would
disregard it, for her attitude to them papers is sceptical; even Lord
NORTHCLIFFE, with all his many voices, dulcet or commanding, has wooed
in vain.

I imagine that the milkman, from whom she heard of the War and whom
she thinks (for his class) a sagacious fellow, has warned her against
the Press. Anyway she has refused--and will, I fancy, never relent--to
allow any extreme idea of food shortage to disturb her routine.

"Look here, Mrs. Legion," you say, "really, you know"--you don't like,