HYDE PARK, Wednesday—The two little girls who are staying with me manage to put in the most exciting days and find and create all their own excitement. They were up before anyone else this morning, and when I came downstairs at 7:00 o'clock, they had already laid the breakfast table. They danced around, hid behind the door, waited for the maid to appear and register the proper amount of surprise at having the elves or the pixies or the gremlins help her out.

There is a grown-up's birthday celebration today and, before breakfast, one of the little girls had picked a vase full of flowers and put it before her place at the table. The other searched around and found an enormous box, in which she placed a corsage she had picked and made up herself. On the whole, they have very few of the gremlin's destructive attributes, though I have had one or two moments when I thought these were also going to appear.

In common with most of the rest of the world, I am experiencing some of the difficulties which come when there is more work to do than there are hands to do it. We had two leaks the night before last and so far have not been able to find anyone to investigate them. Luckily, no serious damage occurred.

I have had another communication from "Just A Reader," who agrees with one of my former correspondents, that it is outrageous for women in business to fill out questionnaires which require them to state their age. This excitement may seem foolish, but I am beginning to think there is something valid in these protests, because there is so much prejudice in some places against the employment of women.

Even at 35 some employers demur, and when you get to be 45 or 50, in most cases, you are just looked upon pityingly and supposed to be completely on the shelf. I have known too many women in the older age brackets who are good workers, and too full of energy to look with complacency on anything which will prevent them from being able to earn a living. They are able to make a real contribution and this contribution is lost if this foolish habit of thinking that everybody over 30 is on the downward grade, becomes fixed in the employers' minds.

One woman wrote me the other day that she was even finding it hard to get a job in war industry, and certainly that should be easy at present. Many an older woman can stand work at a machine longer than the young ones.