All I remembered that was on them was some things I had taken down about Tom Dexter, our odd man, the one whose story I began to tell you when I was interrupted; but what the others were it was weeks before I remembered, and I quite wore myself out trying to think.
If there is one thing that annoys me more than another, it is trying to think of something I particularly want to think of and can’t.
Sometimes Harry will say, “What was the name of that man, or that woman, or that gentleman, or that lady,” as the case may be; and if I can’t think of it, it worries me all day, and I keep saying, perhaps, dozens of names, and not the right one; and after the house is closed and we’re gone to bed, it keeps me awake, and I keep on saying names over and over till Harry gets quite wild, and says, “Oh, bother the name! Do go to sleep, my dear. I want to be up at six to-morrow morning.”
Then I leave off trying to think the name out loud, and I think it to myself, and perhaps, after about an hour’s agony, I suddenly recollect it, and then I’m obliged to get it off my mind by waking Harry up and telling it him before I forget it.
It’s bad enough with a name, but it’s worse with a thing. I remember once in service tying a piece of cotton round my finger to remind me to do something that I particularly didn’t want to forget, and I went to bed with the cotton on my finger, and never thought any more about it until the next afternoon, and then I was a whole day trying to remember what I’d tied the cotton round my finger for; and go mad over it I really thought I should, it kept me on such tenter-hooks all the time.
What was in the notes that stupid girl destroyed I don’t suppose I shall ever remember: that is, not anything worth remembering.
The notes about our odd man, of course, I recollected, because they didn’t matter, he being in our service still at the time, and I could get all I wanted about him by talking to him.
When I was interrupted I had told you as far as where he went into the casual ward, with his wife and little girl, and how he came out.
It must have been a dreadful experience for him, poor fellow, seeing that it was not his own fault that the misery and ruin had come to him, after years of hard work.
When he got out of the casual ward, he and his wife and child walked along the streets, and his wife began to cry and to say it was all her fault, and she had brought him to it, and if she was dead he would be a happier man.