Village Victory Memorial Committee and warming to his work_). "...AND,
SURMOUNTING THE WHOLE, A GRACEFUL FIGURE OF VICTORY, WITH WREATH--SO."]

* * * * *

THE COALITION OF 1950.

"Aren't you being rather badly hit by the price of tobacco?" I asked
Charles, whose pipe is a kind of extra limb to him.

"I have just been composing the plot of a novel," he replied with apparent
irrelevance. "It begins something like this:--

"'Slowly and softly the violet dusk set in. The beautiful young Première
stood at the window of her yellow-and-black boudoir, gazing a little
wistfully at the almost deserted pavements of Downing Street. A white
pigeon perched--'"

"They aren't white," I said; "they're a sort of purply pinky grey."

"All right," said Charles, unmoved, "only it rather spoils the sentence. 'A
sort of purply pinky grey pigeon perched pompously--'"

"Never mind the pigeon," I said, "tell me what was the trouble with the
B.Y.P."

"A change in the leadership of the Opposition. The old leaderess had just
retired and her place had been taken by a new one, a man this time, young
and handsome as Apollo, who had thrown up the Chair of Cinematography at
the London University to plunge on to a political platform."