Given the sex and the opportunities she would have been Napoleon. As it was, she was a manager, given up to managing everything and everybody, including her own weak-kneed father. To see her was to know that she was capable, but I thought I ought to put the usual questions as to previous experience and character. She waived them aside.
“You don’t want to trouble about that, miss. I’m all right. If I say I’ll do for you, I will, and you won’t ’ave no fault to find. Now then, what do you do for yerself—I mean, for a livin’?”
“Well,” I said, “I have some independent means.”
“I see—money of yer own.”
“Yes, though not much. Then I had thoughts of some business. Lately I’ve been writing a little—stories for a magazine.”
“I see, miss. Unsettled. Well, church or chapel?”
I fenced with that question discreetly, and she came off it at once to tell me, almost threateningly, that I couldn’t have my breakfast before eight. I said that even so late an hour as nine would suit me.
“And what time should I ’ave finished doin’ of you up if you didn’t breakfast afore nine? That wouldn’t do neither. Well, I shall be there soon after seven. You’ll ’ave your breakfast at eight and I shall go as soon as I’m through with what’s wanted. I may look in in the evening again, but that ’ull be accordin’. And my money will be four shillin’ a week. I can but try it.”
So I was engaged as mistress to Minnie Saxe, and I am glad to say that I gave satisfaction. On the first morning, just before she went, she asked candidly if there was anything I “wanted done different,” and the few suggestions which I made were never forgotten. “And there’s just one thing,” she said at the door. “If my fawther comes round ’ere subbin’—I mean wanting a shillin’ or two o’ my money what’s comin’—’e ain’t to ’ave nutthink. If ’e says I sent ’im, jest tell ’im ’e’s a liar.”
“Do you have trouble with your father?”