[Conferences between mistresses and servants are being held in various parts of the country to discuss terms of peace in the domestic world.]
Puddleford.
DEAR MOIRA,—We haven't got a servant yet, but we are clutching at a new hope. There is to be a conference here between mistresses and maids, to discuss and readjust the servants' rights and the mistresses' wrongs—or is it the other way about? Anyhow, I shall attend that conference. I shall bribe, plead, consent to any arrangement if I can but net a cook-general. Ten months of doing my own washing-up has brought me to my knees, while Harry says the performance of menial duties has crushed his spirit.
Of course, Harry does make such a fuss of things. You might think, to hear him talk, that the getting up of coal, lighting fires, chopping wood and cleaning flues was the entire work of a household, instead of being mere incidents in the daily routine. If he had to tackle my duties—but men never seem to understand how much there is to do in a house.
I will tell you about the conference when I write again.
Yours always, DODO.
Puddleford.
DEAR MOIRA,—The conference was a most interesting affair; the one going on in Paris could never be half so thrilling. There was a goodly attendance of servants, and they had their own spokeswoman. We spoke for ourselves—those of us who were not too dazed at the sight of so many "treasures" almost within our grasp.
What the servants wanted was not unreasonable. They chiefly demanded a certain time to themselves during the day, with fixed hours for meals, evening free, etc.
Then Mrs. Boydon-Spoute got up—you know how that woman loves to hear herself talk—and said that such demands were outrageous. (It's easy for her to raise objections. She has somehow paralysed her two servants into staying with her for over ten years.) She pointed out that under such conditions the servant would have more freedom than the mistress; and to allow the working classes to thus get the upper hand was nothing short of encouraging Bolshevism in the home. Dreadful thing to say, wasn't it?