Living Alone | Page 5

the
corner."
It was a broomstick.

CHAPTER II
THE COMMITTEE COMES TO MAGIC
I don't suppose for a moment that you know Mitten Island: it is a
difficult place to get to; you have to change 'buses seven times, going
from Kensington, and you have to cross the river by means of a ferry.
On Mitten Island there is a model village, consisting of several hundred
houses, two churches, and one shop.
It was the sixth member who discovered, after the committee meeting,
that the address on the forsaken broomstick's collar was: Number 100
Beautiful Way, Mitten Island, London.
The sixth member, although she was a member of committees, was
neither a real expert in, nor a real lover of, Doing Good. In Doing Good,
I think, we have got into bad habits. We try in groups to do good to the
individual, whereas, if good is to be done, it would seem more likely,
and more consonant with precedent, that the individual might do it to
the group. Without the smile of a Treasurer we cannot unloose our
purse-strings; without the sanction of a Chairman we have no courage;
without Minutes we have no memory. There is hardly one of us who
would dare to give a flannelette nightgown to a Factory Girl who had
Stepped Aside, without a committee to lay the blame on, should the
Factory Girl, fortified by the flannelette nightgown, take Further Steps
Aside.
The sixth member was only too apt to put her trust in committees.
Herself she did not trust at all, though she thought herself quite a good
creature, as selves go. She had come to London two years ago, with a
little trunk and a lot of good intentions as her only possessions, and she
had paid the inevitable penalty for her earnestness. It is a sad thing to
see any one of naturally healthy and rebellious tendency stray into the
flat path of Charity. Gay heedless young people set their unwary feet
between the flowery borders of that path, the thin air of resigned thanks
breathed by the deserving poor mounts to their heads like wine;

committees lie in wait for them on every side; hostels and settlements
entice them fatally to break their journey at every mile; they run
rejoicing to their doom, and I think shall eventually find themselves
without escape, elected eternal life-members of the Committee that sits
around the glassy sea.
The sixth member was saved by a merciful inefficiency of temperament
from attaining the vortex of her whirlpool of charity. To be in the
vortex is, I believe, almost always to see less. The bull's eye is
generally blind.
The sixth member was a person who, where Social Work was
concerned, did more or less as she was told, without doing it
particularly well. The result, very properly, was that all the work which
a committee euphemistically calls "organising work" was left to her.
Organising work consists of sitting in 'buses bound for remote quarters
of London, and ringing the bells of people who are almost always
found to be away for a fortnight. The sixth member had been ordered to
organise the return of the broomstick to its owner.
Perhaps it would be more practical to call the sixth member Sarah
Brown.
The bereaved owner of the broomstick was washing her hair at Number
100 Beautiful Way, Mitten Island. She was washing it behind the
counter of her shop. She was the manageress of the only shop on
Mitten Island. It was a general shop, but made a speciality of such
goods as Happiness and Magic. Unfortunately Happiness is rather
difficult to get in war-time. Sometimes there was quite a queue outside
the shop when it opened, and sometimes there was a card outside,
saying politely: "Sorry, it's no use waiting. I haven't any." Of course the
shop also sold Sunlight Soap, and it was with Sunlight Soap that the
shop-lady was washing her hair, because it was Sunday, and this was a
comparatively cheap amusement. She had no money. She had meant to
go down to the offices of her employer after breakfast, to borrow some
of the salary that would be due to her next week. But then she found
that she had left her broomstick somewhere. As a rule Harold--for that
was the broomstick's name--was fairly independent, and could find his

way home alone, but when he got mislaid and left in strange hands, and
particularly when kindly finders took him to Scotland Yard, he often
lost his head. You, in your innocence, are suggesting that his owner
might have borrowed another broomstick from stock. But you have no
idea what arduous work it is, breaking in a wild broomstick to the
saddle. It sometimes takes days, and is not really suitable work for