“I love still lifes,” said Mrs. Updike. “I’ve got a perfect thing about them. But I have got two pairs, Mrs. Hoare, only I can’t see with either of them and somehow I never seem to find time to go to Barchester. I know I ought to. But if I go to the oculist he is sure to make me have a new pair and it does seem such waste when I’ve got two pairs already, both quite useless.”
All the ladies began to recommend their favourite oculist, as they had before recommended their favourite hand cream, with the same drawback, that the oculists were as impossible to get as the cream, having all gone abroad or been sent to military hospitals. As no work at all was being done, it was just as well that tea came in at that moment.
Mrs. Perry, owing to her husband being a doctor, was allowed to keep her f
