The square dances which children once learnt in dancing class and which have swept America this past summer are coming into favour here. The evacuee children are being taught them—you can't get enough tap-dancing teachers nor "swing" experts in the country places, but the older women remember the fun they used to have and get things going with lancers and quadrilles and the like. There is usually an M.C. (mistress, not master, as often as not) to see that the chain begins in the right place, to see that they salute their partners instead of tripping them up or fighting them. Bowing and curt-seying seem very odd affairs to these children.
Owners of new fine houses would order floor coverings here—the Duchess of Kent in a pattern of flowers and arrows, with the G end the M worked in, Lady Haddington, Lady Louis Mountbatten (chiefly in Spanish designs), Lady Honor Chan-non, with pictures of her town and her country houses and with all her hobbies touched on, music and flying, yachting and skating. Mr, Everard Gates had several, Sir Steven Bilsland (head of the Scottish branch of the Council of Art and Industry) a splendid specimen. Now Mr. Pontremoli, who began by designing chair covers for us to work, but has since spent many years perfecting these beautiful things for floors, can carry on Bo longer. The girls, who would take three to twelve months to make a carpet, according to the size, are dispersed, and there remain to sell only the specimen carpets, the carpets that represented this country at famous exhibitions, some half dozen painted rugs with their wools for us to work, and a score of chair-cover sets also waiting to be stitched. The Queen has had chair covers designed here, one with Windsor Castle worked into its design. Americans, who reckoned this one of our arts, will also be inconsolable.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.