‘Oh, for the servants, my dear, eight and six will be ample. They wear out their things in no time. It is quite shameful that they should be wanting new ones already. I got them a whole supply only the year before last.’
Gundred cluck-clucked.
‘Dear, dear,’ she said, ‘that Mrs. Bosket must really be a very careless woman—yes? And she tells me that new sheets are wanted as well—sheets and pillow-cases, dear mamma.’
‘My child, how truly dreadful!’ answered Lady Adela. ‘You must certainly keep a close eye on Mrs. Bosket, though I do trust the poor thing is honest.’
‘Oh, perfectly, and most obliging, but not equal to responsibility. One so often finds that in a household. And it is so important to have an efficient head—yes? I feel that one cannot safely leave her the ordering of things like this, for instance. I have to do it myself.’
Had she had ten housekeepers—had she been the daughter of two reigning sovereigns—Gundred would still have insisted on ordering the table-cloths herself. It was her nature, but she made a virtue of her nature’s necessity, and fell to weighing the comparative merits of pillow-cases at half a crown and at three and six. Half a crown was eventually fixed on.
Isabel looked at Kingston. She saw that Gundred’s dialogue had irritated him. Why his annoyance was so keen she hardly knew. He himself would have been puzzled to account for it. Her eyes triumphed as she watched him, and obviously rejoiced at the defeat of his effort to pull Gundred into their talk.
‘That’s all you are likely to get out of Gundred for an hour or two,’ she murmured.
‘Martha is a much more pleasant, useful person than tiresome, head-in-the-air Mary,’ he flashed back at her resentfully.
‘Especially to talk to,’ replied Isabel mildly. ‘As a matter of fact, a man wants both sorts—a Martha-wife and a Mary-wife: the Martha-wife to air the beds and order the dinner, and the Mary-wife to look at and talk to. Most of the tragedies in history have arisen from a man’s failure to get the two in one person. Lucky men have an aunt or a sister, as well as a wife, to fill the second part; but generally a man either has a Mary-wife who talks brilliantly, but feeds him on cold mutton, or a Martha-wife who will order a good dinner, but can only talk about the servants. And then he looks round for someone to think about meals, while Mary discusses the soul; or to discuss the soul while Martha is interviewing the cook. And then there are complications. The whole system is wrong. People ought to be much freer to get what they like.’