She said, "You and Dimbie will require someone extremely capable. Amelia Cockles exactly answers to this description."
Now what worries me is whether to sit down quietly and let Amelia manage us and be happy, or whether to endeavour to uphold our dignity and be uncomfortable.
Were I to put such a question to Dimbie he would say, "Let's be happy." But this happiness is qualified when she gives us roly-poly pudding more than once every ten days. It is a pudding for which I have always had a peculiar dislike. I will order, I mean suggest, that we shall have a thatched house pudding for dinner. I mention my liking for brown thatch, not straw-coloured thatch. I sit with an expectant appetite, and a roly-poly appears, white, flabby, and bursting at its ends with raspberry jam. Reproachfully I look at Amelia, but her return gaze is as innocent and ingenuous as a little child's. She would have me believe that I never even so much as mentioned a thatched house pudding. Dimbie sends up his plate for a second helping. While Amelia goes for the cheese course I say, "Do you think you could like roly-poly a little less, only a little less?" And Dimbie, passing up his plate for a third helping, says he will try, but it will be difficult, as Amelia makes such ripping ones, and of course she enters the room at the moment and hears him. She hears everything. I think she must fly between the kitchen and dining-room when she waits at dinner, or have spring boots concealed beneath the hall table.
I happened to mention the roly-poly to Nanty, and she said, "Be thankful she can make a pudding at all, or you might have to make it yourself." There was an assumption in her manner that I couldn't, and I didn't argue the point. It is useless arguing with Nanty.
There is another point in Amelia's disfavour to put against her admitted capability—she squeaks. Her shoes squeak and her corsets creak, and her breathing is conducted in a series of gasps—long ones when she sweeps a room, short ones when she hands the potatoes at dinner. She seems to want oiling at every point of vantage, like a bicycle. Sometimes I lie awake at night and discuss or try to discuss with Dimbie the possibilities of stopping the squeaking.
"Tell her to wear cloth boots like your mother."
"Mother doesn't wear cloth boots," I contradict.
"I thought you said she did," he murmurs sleepily.
"No, our servants wear them."
"Well, tell Amelia to do the same."