I can hear the efficient female say scornfully that I should get servants who know their business; but she forgets that if she or I do not have to train our striped geese in the sweat of our brows it means that some other mother of a family has done it—or perished in the attempt—and that Sarah Ann has left to “better herself.” Also one of the most efficient characteristics of the efficient female is her powerful fascination for servants of the clockwork-mouse type whom I abhor. Their machinery has been made by people with different tastes from my own, and when I have found the key and wound them up they begin folding table-napkins into wine-glasses with horrid dexterity, or they play a sort of suburban Halma called “ladies first” when they hand the courses.
Clara’s migratory instincts, her ubiquitousness, and her morning blindness were a constant annoyance to me, yet I look lovingly back upon them now over the heads of a succession of young persons, all of whom had occupied positions of trust in the houses of the semi-educated. When Clara left me in order to marry a traveller in sewing machines I acquired a wonderful insight into the habits of the public dignitaries in our neighbourhood. I learned that the Mayoress of Pond never grudged the expense of paper mats under the fruit and preferred her sandwiches tied with pink ribbon. That Lady Knight believed in putting out Sir Donald’s clothes herself in the evening, and that it was not customary in the houses of the commercially great to clean the silver more than once a week “unless there was company.”
I once asked one of these Belles Brummells whether it was better form not to wash before dinner unless for a party of eight, and she replied gravely that it was a matter of taste, and did I wish hot water; she had no objection to bringing it.
Note.—I read this part aloud to the efficient female and she says that was not what she meant.
CHAPTER IV: TRADESMEN
The story of Mr. Jones’s sin, and how he failed to send the meat in time for luncheon, has been told. But it must not be supposed that this was the one sin of a lifetime, standing out clear and black against a white background of habitual punctuality. Nor was he a lonely serpent in an otherwise spotless Eden of tradesmen who walked with God. They were all Sons of Belial. If I could turn the whole lot of them into pillars of salt, and cheese, and mutton, and cabbage, and all the other dilatory and perverse ingredients of my daily life I would do it, and they might go on “never coming” as much as they liked. They might stay there all day making apologies and it would not matter to me. I should simply come and hack off the pieces I wanted and not listen to a word they said.
Of course, in one way, a shop answers the same purpose. But there is not the same pleasure in asking for a thing as there would be in hewing it off the person of one’s enemy. And, besides, the shops are always full of women who want to look at everything they buy.
Sometimes I have waited quite a long time while some silly creature with a long upper lip and a badly balanced hat fiddles about with two tins of mustard and explains why neither will do. When it comes to my turn and the shopman says: “Pepper, m’m; yes, m’m; I’ll just show it you,” and rushes off before I can catch him, it makes me so angry that I forget all the other things I wanted. I know all that there is to be said on the other side about the advantages of shopping oneself. It is not for nothing that I have encountered the efficient female on our own ground. But if I have been flattered she has had exercise, that is one thing! Some are born housekeepers, some achieve housekeeping, and some have the horrid thing thrust upon them.
They say seeing is believing, but somehow I find it impossible to believe in a tradesman even after I have seen him, and the few things I do believe about him I don’t like. The ego of the fishmonger, as well as that of his representative imp who scribbles his name daily on every available wall-space near the back door, is to me wholly uncongenial, and I dislike the exaggerated value he puts on the creatures whom he conjures from the deep.