course was to try to acquire a taste for it; and we did; we succeeded—­too well!—­until at last we could not get enough of the dough.  The unkindest cut of all, however, did not come until pies, pastry, and sweet cakes of all kinds were pronounced indigestible.  The refined cruelty of this revolutionary decree was bitterly resented; not only by the confectioners, whose shop windows were works of art, but also by the public, who loved art.  Even gouty subjects and folk with livers protested.  As for the ladies, the war on sponge cakes almost broke their hearts.  Pastry was to many of them a staple sustenance, and conducive—­besides being nice—­to a, wan complexion.  Five o’clock teas lost prestige; the tarts were gone.  It was a case of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.  The propriety of a deputation to the Colonel, to test his gallantry, was mooted; but the proposal, strange to say, found no seconder.  Meanwhile, he (the Colonel) was on the trail of the butcher again.  Prior to the promulgation of the eight-penny regulation the butcher had been in his element, charging what he liked, and liking generally a shilling.  The small people in the trade had sold their cattle to their richer brethren who now made hay in the “ample sunshine” with great ardour.  Their prices, it is true, had been limited by proclamation; but they still catered for the wealthy classes, and the “greater number” suffered much in consequence.  Some people could get no meat, and when the Colonel awoke to the situation he suddenly limited the allowance of each adult to half-a-pound per diem.  A howl of indignation followed, and Kekewich was denounced as a “high-handed vegetarian.”  To be limited to less meat in a day than a man was accustomed to “shift” at one meal, was at once “too much” and “too little.”  Even this restriction worked badly.  Coaches and fours were driven through the proclamation; the well-to-do got good weight, and the toiler—­shinbone!  The system of meat distribution was a source of trouble to the end.

Friday morning was one to live in our memories, it brought the execrable hooters again.  No pen-picture can be drawn of their effect on the nerves; their unearthly melody must be heard.  It sounded incidental to carnage, and wailed forth that the enemy was at last about to grapple with us.  The shops were promptly closed; employers and employees rushed off in carts, on bicycles, or on foot to their respective redoubts.  It was admirable:  the readiness, the despatch with which every man hurried to his place.  Women and children—­liable to arrest—­hastened to their homes.  Soon the streets were completely deserted, save by the alert constable who walked his ’beat’—­ready wherever he saw a head (outside a door) to crack it.  All ears were strained to hear the first shot; and the suspense was probably more poignant than in later times when we had grown accustomed to the cry of wolf.