Breakfast
was waiting for him in the dining-room, but he first passed into his
library, and, taking up the Times Atlas, consulted a map of the
Balkan Peninsula. "A thing like that," he observed, closing the
volume with a snap, "might happen to any one."
THE SEX THAT DOESN'T SHOP
The opening of a large new centre for West End shopping,
particularly feminine shopping, suggests the reflection, Do women
ever really shop? Of course, it is a well-attested fact that they
go forth shopping as assiduously as a bee goes flower-visiting, but
do they shop in the practical sense of the word? Granted the money,
time, and energy, a resolute course of shopping transactions would
naturally result in having one's ordinary domestic needs unfailingly
supplied, whereas it is notorious that women servants (and
housewives of all classes) make it almost a point of honour not to
be supplied with everyday necessities. "We shall be out of starch
by Thursday," they say with fatalistic foreboding, and by Thursday
they are out of starch. They have predicted almost to a minute the
moment when their supply would give out and if Thursday happens to
be early closing day their triumph is complete. A shop where starch
is stored for retail purposes possibly stands at their very door,
but the feminine mind has rejected such an obvious source for
replenishing a dwindling stock. "We don't deal there" places it at
once beyond the pale of human resort. And it is noteworthy that,
just as a sheep-worrying dog seldom molests the flocks in his near
neighbourhood, so a woman rarely deals with shops in her immediate
vicinity.
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