“Should do, if I took my eye off of ’im. ’E’s afride of me.”
I could understand that. I tried to say something delicate and sympathetic about the wide spread evils of intemperance, Minnie Saxe looked puzzled.
“Watcher mean, miss? Drink? Why, ’e’s a life-long teetotal. No, it’s sweets as ’e can’t keep awye from—sugar an’ choclit, an’ pyestry, and ice-creams from the Italyuns. ’E’s no better nor a child—mikin’ ’isself a laughin’-stock an’ wyestin’ ’is money. And if I ’ont give ’im none for such truck ’e’s as cunnin’ as a cart-load of monkeys about gettin’ it. That’s why I dropped you that word o’ warnin’.”
The word of warning was wanted. Her father called a few days later to say that Minnie had asked him to look in on his way back from work to ask the kindness of sixpence in advance as they had friends to supper. He was a fat little man with a round innocent face, and really looked much younger than his daughter. I lectured him severely and he made no defence. “I did think that sixpence was a cert,” he said sadly. “But there—she don’t leave one no chawnst.”
I consoled him with a large slice of cake. But unfortunately Minnie found him in the street in the act of devouring it. “And,” she told me, “of course I knowed that kike by sight. And a pretty dressin’-down I give ’im fur ’is cadgin’ wyes.” He worked for a book-binder when he could get a job, and was also intermittently a house-painter and a night-watchman.
I got on very well with Minnie. She shopped admirably and got things cheaper and better than I had ever done. Owing to her fine independence of character she was occasionally rude, but there was always a penitential reaction; she did not apologise or even allude to the past, but for a few days she would call me “m’lady,” give me more hot water than usual in the morning, and bring every bit of brass in the place to a state of brilliant polish that seemed almost ostentatious. She respected my cooking and despised my story-writing, and I am inclined to think she was right. “You can cook my ’ead off,” she said in a complimentary moment; but I never attempted that delicacy. The trouble with my stories was that I had not got my poor dear papa’s style and could not get it. The children in my stories were just as consumptive and just as misunderstood as in his; they forgave their mother and saved the kitten from drowning and died young. And the excessively domestic magazine that always accepted him almost always refused me.
I began to get rather nervous. I had given up the notion of capturing some big business by the sheer brilliance of my ideas. I had no business training and no familiarity with the ways of it. I was unproved, and firms would not let me begin at the top to prove me. Perhaps it was not unnatural, though I still feel sure that some of the ideas had lots of money in them, if only I could have found any backing. I did not make anything like enough by story-writing to pay my expenses, and in consequence I was eating up my capital. “Wilhelmina Castel,” I said to myself severely, “this cannot go on.” I could not hope for a continual supply of windfalls. My hatred of the usual feminine professions, with thirty shillings a week as the top-note and a gradual diminuendo into the workhouse, was as strong as ever. Yet I questioned whether it would not be better for me to spend capital in learning shorthand and typewriting, worm my way into a good business house as a clerk, and then trust to my intelligence to find or make the opportunities that would ultimately lead to a partnership. I wished I had someone with whom I could talk it over. But what Minnie Saxe said was perfectly true.
“You ain’t got no friends seemingly,” said Minnie Saxe.
“Yes, I have, Minnie, but not here. In London I’m playing a lone hand, as they say.”
“Well, it ain’t right. And I shan’t be lookin’ in We’n’sday night, ’cos I’ve promised to do up Mrs. Saunders.” She always spoke of her employers as if they were parcels.