have been an ambassador. The Colonel maintained that ambassadors are like bishops and cannot share their official titles with their wives, particularly after they are dead. My own view was that if Mrs. Mimms wanted to be styled “the Honourable” it would be discourteous to deny her the title.
We had hardly settled down again after deciding this point when Mrs. Minims upset us still more seriously. She gave a Christmas Tree to the village children. At first we thought that this would not matter to any one except the vicar. We were mistaken about that. Mrs. Mimms made us all help. The Colonel and I spent a long afternoon on a step-ladder sticking candles on the branches. Hankly, who is a lean, yellow little man, was made to dress himself up as “Father Christmas.” We got no dinner on the evening of the party, and very nearly had to dance with the children afterwards. The presents which Mrs. Mimms distributed to the children were of the most gorgeous and expensive kind. We all agreed that she must be enormously rich, and the Colonel said that she would demoralise the whole village.
She certainly demoralised us. We found ourselves invited to dinner at the Manor House twice, sometimes three times, a week, and had a standing invitation to supper every Sunday night. It was no use refusing the invitations. I tried that twice; but Mrs. Mimms simply came round to my house in her motor and fetched me. The Colonel complained bitterly. He has been writing a book on Chhota Nagpur ever since I knew him, and he said that he hated being interrupted in the evenings. He only dined with Mrs. Mimms in order to avoid unpleasantness with his wife, who wanted to go. Hankly said plainly that Mrs. Mimms had a very good cock, and we all came in the end to accept that as our excuse for dining with her.
It is, I know, scarcely credible, but last Easter she dragged us into private theatricals. By that time we had agreed that Mrs. Mimms, in spite of her annoying lack of repose, was a very kind-hearted woman, and we did not wish to snub her in any way. My own part in the play let me in for a love scene with Mrs. Challenger, the most grotesquely absurd thing imaginable, for the lady is sixty at least and enormously fat. I should never have agreed to do it, however good-hearted Mrs. Mimms might be, if Hankly had not been cast for the part of an heroic Christian curate, and I knew he would look even more foolish than I did when I kissed Mrs. Challenger’s left ear. Hankly hated being an heroic Christian curate and did not do the part at all well. We got through the theatricals in June, and after that, except for a couple of picnics every week, we had a comparatively quiet time until the
