"She won't."
"Then I give it up."
"Dimbie," I say coaxingly, "before you go quite, quite off, couldn't you suggest a remedy for squeaking? Oil would spoil the carpets."
"Fill 'em with corn," comes the amazing suggestion.
"You put corn in wet shoes, dear donkey," I shout, trying to clutch him back from that beautiful land of oblivion to which all of us, happy or unhappy, healthy or sick, young or old, are so glad to go, when like little children we are just tired. But he had gone. Nothing short of a thunderbolt would bring him back till the morrow.
And when that morrow came I suggested to Amelia that she should dip the shoes into water.
"Why not boil 'em, mum, with a little washing powder?"
Her face was stolid, but there was a hint of irony in her voice. With dignity I walked from the kitchen, barricaded myself, and once again sat down to think about her. The squeaking was unendurable; the creaking of the corsets was nearly as bad. For these two things I could not give her notice; besides, I should never dare to give anybody notice.
A little later on I caught her in the hall in an old pair of wool-work slippers embroidered with tea-roses which had belonged to Dimbie, but which I had surreptitiously banished to the boxroom. She was in the midst of a cake-walk; her chest was stuck out like a pouter pigeon's, and one tea-rose was poised high in the air.
"Amelia!" I shouted, scandalised, "what are you dreaming of? Have you taken leave of your senses?"