That, I suppose, is true; but it seems to me that she is giving us both a lot of unnecessary trouble. Every week I pick out this decorative design with a penknife, and every week she works it in again. When you consider the time and the red cotton wasted it becomes clear that a sixpenny bottle of marking ink and a quill pen would be cheaper to her in the long run.
But she has a weakness for red cotton. The holes in the handkerchiefs she works round with it—I never quite understand why. To call my attention to them, perhaps, and to prevent me from falling through. Or else to say, "You did this. I only washed up to the red, so it can't be my fault."
If I were married and had a house of my own, there would be no man below; consequently he wouldn't wear the absurd collars he does. I get about two of them a week (so even red cotton is not infallible); and if they were the right size and a decent shape I shouldn't grumble so much. But I do object to my collars mixing in town with these extraordinary things of his. At Hampstead, it may be, they have to meet on terms of equality, more or less; force of circumstances throws them together a good deal. But in town no collar of mine could be expected to keep up the acquaintance. "You knew me in the bath," I can imagine one of his monstrosities saying; and, "When I am in the bath I shall know you again," would be the dignified reply of my "16-Golf."
Collars trouble me a good deal one way or another. Whenever I buy a new dozen, all the others seem suddenly to have become old-fashioned in shape, and of the wrong size. Nothing will induce me to wear one of them again. They get put away in boxes. Covered with dust, they lie forgotten.
Forgotten, did I say? No. The housekeeper finds them and sends them to the wash. About a month later she finds them again. She is always finding clothes which have been discarded for ever, and sending them to the wash.
The mistake is, that we have not yet come to an agreement as to what really is to go to the wash, and what isn't. There is a tacit understanding that everything on the floor on Monday morning is intended for Hampstead. The floor is the linen-basket. It seemed a good idea at the time, but it has its faults. Things gets on to the floor somehow, which were never meant for the north-west—blankets, and parts of a tweed suit, and sofa cushions. Things have a mysterious way of dropping. Half-a-dozen pairs of white flannel trousers dropped from a shelf one December. A pair of footer shorts used to go every week—a pair which I would carefully put down to take the bath water when I had finished with it. I wonder what those shorts thought they were doing. Probably they quite fancied themselves at football, and boasted about the goals they shot to companions whom they met at Hampstead.
"You're always here!" a pair of local wanderers would say.
"My dear man, I play so hard, I don't care how dirty I get."
The irony of it!
But, worst of all, the laundry-book. Every week the housekeeper says to me, "Would you pay your book now, as it's been owing for a month?" And every week I pay. That sounds absurd, but I swear it's true. Or else the weeks go very quickly.