Being a professional woman, my requirements in the way of a housemaid were rather special. While at times I can superintend my small household, and direct my domestic affairs, there are long periods during which I must have absolute quiet, untroubled by door bell, telephone, or the remnants of roast beef.
There are two of us, in a modern six room apartment, in a city where the servant problem has forced a large and ever-increasing percentage of the population into small flats. We have late breakfasts, late dinners, a great deal of company, and an amount of washing, both house and personal, which is best described as “unholy.”
Five or six people often drop in informally, and unexpectedly, for the evening, which means, of course, a midnight “spread,” and an enormous pile of dishes to be washed in the morning. There are, however, some advantages connected with the situation. We have a laundress besides the maid; we have a twelve-o’clock breakfast on Sunday instead of a dinner, getting the cold lunch ourselves in the evening, thus giving the girl a long afternoon and evening; and we are away from home a great deal, often staying weeks at a time.
The eternal “good wages to right party” of the advertisements was our inducement also, but, apparently, there were no “right parties!”
The previous incumbent, having departed in a fit of temper at half an hour’s notice, and left me, so to speak, “in the air,” with dinner guests on the horizon a day ahead, I betook myself to an intelligence office, where, strangely enough, there seems to be no intelligence, and grasped the first chance of relief.
Nothing more unpromising could possibly be imagined. The new maid was sad, ugly of countenance, far from strong physically, and in every way hopeless and depressing. She listened, unemotionally, to my glowing description of the situation. Finally she said, “Ay tank Ay try it.”
She came, looked us over, worked a part of a week, and announced that she couldn’t stay. “Ay can’t feel like home here,” she said. “Ay am not satisfied.”
She had been in her last place for three years, and left because “my’s lady, she go to Europe.” I persuaded her to try it for a while longer, and gave her an extra afternoon or two off, realising that she must be homesick.
After keeping us on tenter-hooks for two weeks, she sent for her trunk. I discovered that she was a fine laundress, carefully washing and ironing the things which were too fine to go into the regular wash; a most excellent cook, her kitchen and pantry were at all times immaculate; she had no followers, and few friends; meals were ready on the stroke of the hour, and she had the gift of management.