When his fiancée asked him to bring her a chair or a fan or to get her shawl, and kept him busy waiting on her he laughed with delight at the novel tasks assigned to him, and felt that he was a royal courtier in the kingdom of beauty.
The engagement was a brief one; and the wedding was a brilliant affair.
Everybody declared that it was an ideal union, and all the outlook was toward perfect happiness.
They did not possess wealth; a simple competence only, which enabled them to begin housekeeping with one maid. The maid did not stay long, and the first cloud on the happiness of the home was in the difficulty the young wife found in keeping any maid more than a few months.
Soon after the honeymoon the young husband realised that his position of courtier in the kingdom of beauty was growing rather difficult.
He was obliged to go to his office at nine o'clock in the morning, but the frequent intervals between the departure of one maid and the arrival of another, made a similar frequency of a breakfast at the club or restaurant, and, before his departure from the house, he was often requested to 'be a darling and bring his own lovey dovey a glass of milk and a bit of fruit.'
Knowing that he had taken his 'lovey dovey' from a home where she always breakfasted in bed, the devoted husband felt it his duty to make life as pleasant as possible for her; yet the position of butler and maid combined was not pleasing to his manly spirit. Still he liked to be obliging, and he continued to do her bidding.
Between the basement kitchen and the sleeping-room of the young couple, two flights of stairs intervened, and it seemed never to occur to the mistress of the household that it was a hardship for any one save herself to go up and down these stairs a dozen times in a brief space of time on errands for her comfort.
The husband prospered, and engaged two more domestics for his wife. But with increased service her demands increased—and confusion instead of order reigned.
Maids were called to the top floor on trivial errands, while they were engaged in duties in the basement, and they were sent to the corner box to mail letters, to the grocery store, or the chemist's, or on errands a half-dozen times a day.