LACE FEET.

Otago Witness, Issue 3994, 30 September 1930, Page 63

LACE FEET.

It’s a disease that affects quite a lot of otherwise healthy people, forcing them to breakfast in bed, or lie with their feet up on the sofa! Curiously enough, the attacks generally become most acute when it comes to a question of whose turn it is to wash up, or who’ll run out for the sausages the butcher forgot to send. The French have a slang expression to signify the unwillingness of these lazy people to do anything. They say: “ I can’t walk; I’ve got ‘lace feet’! ”

What is just the trouble with Claire? Her feet are very-well-thank-you wr walking five miles on the links, or skating round the ice-rink, or dancing the six-eight. But when it comes to spending a couple of hours on them, lending you a hand with the new curtains, or walking along Oxford street to match a pattern for Eva, who lives in Yorkshire, they arc transformed, as if by magic, from fairly useful fives into frail “ lace feet,” unfit to bear her downstairs!

“ Of course, darling, you know I’d love to help you, but I simply daren’t. That’s the sickening part about not being very strong. One has to be so careful. If only I were like you, and could come down to breakfast feeling fit for anything ”! And she smiles at you wanly, entirely forgetful of the fact that her “ lace feet ” supported her very well through six sets of tennis, and enabled her to walk five miles of London pavement to find a hat for herself in just the right shade of blue.

But write and ask her to go to the stores and inquire what has happened to your lawn-mower, suggest she helps you weed the garden or take the letters to the post, and, with a gasp, she’ll sink back, a sufferer from “lace feet” till the danger’s over.

There’s Beryl, whose feet are Al at tramping over Hampstead Heath on a fine Saturday afternoon, but C 3 when it comes to walking round to inquire how old Aunt Nellie is after her illness.

Moira, who’s worn out three pairs oi dance shoes this winter, talks as if her feet were useless bits of Valenciennes or finest point de Venise, when it comes to who shall be the one to run upstairs and tell Mr Brewster he’s wanted on th*, telephone, or who wouldn’t mind calling at the library on their way home from the office. For, like many others, her feet turn to lace the minute there’s a job of work to lie done!—Women’s Weeklv.