in the minimum wage of vassals and one thing and another.

"The stately homes of England
How beautiful they stood
Before their recent owners
Relinquished them for good,"

as the poet justly observes. And even if there is enough money to keep
up the castle without the broad acres (though as a matter of fact an
acre is not any broader than it is long) there is no fun in having a
castle at all when the deer park has been divided into allotments and
the Dutch garden is under swedes.

The question is then what is going to happen to Montmorency (pronounced
"Mumsie") Castle, and The Towers at Barley Melling?

In London the difficulty of dealing with huge houses has been solved in
a very subtle manner by turning them into a couple of maisonettes
apiece, so that under the portico of what used to be 105 Myrtle Crescent
you discover two perfectly good doors, marked 105a and 105b. Into the
letter-box of the door marked 105a the postman invariably puts the
letters intended for 105b, and _vice versá_, but, as these are always
letters addressed to the last tenant but two, it does not really very
much matter. Both are desirable maisonettes, though the tenants of 105a
have the sole enjoyment of the lincrusta dadoes in the original
dining-room. In some cases there are as many as three maisonettes, and
the notice on the area gate says, "105c. _Mrs. Orlando Smith_," where it
used to say simply "No bottles." I never really understood that notice
myself, for whenever I am walking along with an empty bottle that I want
to get rid of I do not throw it down into an area, where it would make a