"A what?" I gasped.
"A grammerfone—to play, you know."
"Where will it play?" I asked feebly.
"'Ere," she said, waving a comprehensive hand; "an' it won't 'arf liven the place up. My friend 'as 'ers goin' all day long."
I stifled a moan of horror, for I am one of the elect few who loathe gramophones, even at their best and costliest.
"Elizabeth," I cried, tears of anguish rising to my eyes, "let me implore you not to get one of those horr—I mean, not to be imposed on again."
"I've got it," she announced. "I meantersay I've paid the first shillin' an' it's comin' to-morrow. I 'ave it a month on trial."
The month certainly was a trial—for me. Ours is not one of those old-fashioned residences with thick walls that muffle sound, and where servants can be consigned to dwell in the bowels of the earth. Every noise which arises in the kitchen, from Elizabeth's badinage with the butcher's boy to the raucous grind of the knife-machine, echoes through the house viâ the study where I work.
Thus, although Elizabeth kept the kitchen-door shut, I found myself compelled for one-half of the day to consider an insistent demand as to the ultimate destination of flies in the winter-time. The rest of the day the gramophone gave us K-K-K-Katie. (Elizabeth had only two records to begin with.)