Seventeen
What a mysterious thing sleep is. You go to bed worrying about gipsiesand secret enemies, and detectives planted in your house and the possibil-ities of kidnapping and a hundred other things; and sleep whisks youaway from it all. You travel very far and you don’t know where you’vebeen, but when you wake up, it’s to a totally new world. No worries, noapprehensions. Instead, when I woke up on the 17th September I was in amood of boisterous¹ excitement.
“A wonderful day,” I said to myself with conviction. “This is going to bea wonderful day.” I meant it. I was like those people in advertisementsthat offer to go anywhere and do anything. I went over plans in my head. Ihad arranged to meet Major Phillpot at a sale at a country house about fif-teen miles away. They had some very nice stuff there and I’d alreadymarked down two or three items in the catalogue. I was quite excitedabout the whole thing.
Phillpot was very knowledgeable² about period furniture and silver andthings of that kind, not because he was artistic—he was entirely³ a sportingman—but simply because he knew. His whole family was knowledgeable.
I looked over the catalogue at breakfast. Ellie had come down in a ridinghabit. She rode most mornings now—sometimes alone, sometimes withClaudia. She had the American habit of drinking coffee and a glass of or-ange juice and nothing much else for breakfast. My tastes, now that Ihadn’t got to restrain them in any way, were very much those of a Vic-torian squire⁴! I liked lots of hot dishes on the sideboard. I ate kidneys thismorning and sausages and bacon as well. Delicious.
“What are you doing, Greta?” I asked.
Greta said she was meeting Claudia Hardcastle at the station at MarketChadwell and they were going up to London to a white sale. I asked what awhite sale was.
“Does there really have to be white in it?” I asked.
Greta looked scornful and said that a white sale meant a sale of house-hold linen⁵ and blankets and towels and sheets, etc. There were some verygood bargains at a special shop in Bond Street of which she had been senta catalogue.
I said to Ellie, “Well, if Greta is going to London for the day, why don’tyou drive in and meet us at the George in Bartington. The food there’svery good, so old Phillpot said. He suggested you might come. One o’clock.

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