Rose Waterford was a cynic. She looked upon life as an
opportunity for writing novels and the public as her raw
material. Now and then she invited members of it to her house
if they showed an appreciation of her talent and entertained
with proper lavishness. She held their weakness for lions in
good-humoured contempt, but played to them her part of the
distinguished woman of letters with decorum.

I was led up to Mrs. Strickland, and for ten minutes we
talked together. I noticed nothing about her except that she
had a pleasant voice. She had a flat in Westminster, overlooking
the unfinished cathedral, and because we lived in the same
neighbourhood we felt friendly disposed to one another.
The Army and Navy Stores are a bond of union between all who dwell
between the river and St. James's Park. Mrs. Strickland asked
me for my address, and a few days later I received an
invitation to luncheon.

My engagements were few, and I was glad to accept. When I
arrived, a little late, because in my fear of being too early
I had walked three times round the cathedral, I found the
party already complete. Miss Waterford was there and Mrs. Jay,
Richard Twining and George Road. We were all writers.
It was a fine day, early in spring, and we were in a good humour.
We talked about a hundred things. Miss Waterford,
torn between the aestheticism of her early youth, when she
used to go to parties in sage green, holding a daffodil, and
the flippancy of her maturer years, which tended to high heels
and Paris frocks, wore a new hat. It put her in high spirits.
I had never heard her more malicious about our common friends.