All the Smiths, and I too, would probably drop down dead from pained shock.
But though she is gone I continue to think furiously. Where had she been all the jolly evening? Where has she returned to? Well, to her beautiful hygienic kitchen, where she sits or works all by herself, on velvet. My thoughts follow her existence through the day, and I remember that from morn till onerous eve she must not, save on business, speak unless she is spoken to. Then I give up thinking about Matilda’s case, because it annoys me. I recall a phrase of young John’s; he is youthfully interested in social problems, and he wants a latch-key vote. Said John to me once, when another Matilda had left: “Of course, if one thought too much about Matilda’s case, one wouldn’t be able to sleep at nights.”
When you visit the Smiths the home seems always to be in smooth working order. But ask Mrs. Smith! Ask Mary! Get beneath the surface. And you will glimpse the terrible trouble that lies concealed. Mrs. Smith began with Matilda the First. Are you aware that this is Matilda the Fortieth, and that between Matilda the Fortieth and Matilda the Forty-first there will probably be an interregnum? Mrs. Smith simply cannot get Matildas. And when by happy chance she does get a Matilda, the misguided girl won’t see the velvet with which the kitchen and the attic are carpeted.
Mrs. Smith says the time will come when the race of Matildas will have disappeared. And Mrs. Smith is right. The “general servant” is bound to disappear utterly. In North America she has already almost disappeared. Think of that! Instead of her, in many parts of the American continent, there is an independent stranger who, if she came to the Smiths, would have the ineffable impudence to eat at the same table as the Smiths, just as though she was of the same clay, and who, when told to do something, would be quite equal to snapping out: “Do it yourself.”
But you say that the inconvenience brought about by the disappearance of Matilda would be too awful to contemplate. I venture to predict that the disappearance of Matilda will not exhaust the resources of civilisation. The home will continue. But mechanical invention will have to be quickened in order to replace Matilda’s red hands. And there will be those suburban restaurants! And I have a pleasing vision of young John, in the home which he builds, cleaning his own boots. Inconvenient, but it is coming!