"It isn't only that they ask ridiculous things," Ben confirmed, "but they so often want something more, for nothing. 'Now that I am here, they say, 'perhaps you could tell me this.' Only to-day a woman who had come about Spanish lessons for her daughter asked me, as she was leaving and had paid, what to do with a cook who stole. I asked her if she could cook well, and when she said 'Yes,' I told her to keep her, even if she stole diamonds and pearls. But it was nothing but odds and ends. 'Odds and ends are replaceable,' I said, 'but a cook isn't. The whole world wants cooks at this moment. Besides,' I said, 'to take odds and ends isn't stealing at all—to a cook. We all have our code, and a cook's code permits her to take odds and ends and smuggle them out of the house, where she would be a pillar of honesty in the midst, say, of money or jewellery.' Every one is dishonest somewhere. My father, I'm sure, is scrupulous in most ways, but he boasts that he always does railway companies if he can. The best parlourmaids take cigarettes. The nicest people pocket matches. If you want to know something about petty purloinings by what are supposed to be the elect, ask the secretary of any women's club. And I'm told that in quite crack men's clubs the nailbrushes have to be chained.
"We have every kind of question and from every nationality," she went on. "A little Japanese woman came in the other day to know how to get lessons in English—at least, not exactly lessons. What she wanted was someone to read English books aloud with her. Not to her; with her. They were to sit side by side so that she could follow the pronunciation. She knew English perfectly, but had some of the words most comically wrong. But how natural! Indeed I don't know how foreigners ever get our words right. This little Japanese pet was completely puzzled by 'July,' for instance. She used the word as if it rhymed with 'truly.' And why not? We say 'duly' and 'unduly' and 'unruly' and 'Julius' and 'Juliet.' And then we say, 'July.' It's too absurd."
"And could you help her?" I asked.
"As it happened, I could. I remembered an old friend of ours who was only too glad to do it, and she has been writing since to thank me for giving her the opportunity of meeting anyone so charming."
"What I want to know," I said, "is how the dickens do you know what to charge?"
"There are several ways," said Ben. "There's a fixed tariff for certain things, and there's so much a quarter of an hour for interviews. For shopping I charge a fee. A time-chart is kept and they pay so much an hour and for cabs. But I don't do that for strangers, or, at any rate, not for anyone without an introduction.
"Most people," she continued, "want either servants or rooms; and I send them on to registry offices or house-agents, and share the commission. I couldn't as a regular thing go into either of those businesses myself. There would be no time left.
"Let me think of some of our recent applications," she said. "Oh, yes! A South African woman came in yesterday to know something about London churches. She was to be here for six months and wanted to take sittings somewhere; could I tell her the best preachers? They must be evangelical or, at any rate, low. Anything in the nature of ritualism she couldn't endure.
"And then," she went on, "there was a widow from Cheltenham who wanted advice about dogs. What was the best kind of dog for a lady living alone? She had noticed that the dogs of most ladies of her own age—that is to say, elderly—were very disobedient; but that would be no use to her. She did not want a dog that had to be led. I said that the most popular dog with elderly ladies at the moment was a Sealyham or West Highland. White, in any case. But I doubted if they were very obedient.
"She asked whether I thought a lady dog or a gentleman dog the more suitable. Really, people are marvellous."