“Something particular for baby, sir.”
“Drop it directly, whatever it is. Nurse!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mind the crossings. Don’t let the children sit down if they’re hot. Don’t let them speak to other children. Don’t let them get playing with strange dogs. Don’t let them mess their things. And above all, don’t bring Master Jack back in a perspiration. Is there anything more before I go out?”
“No, sir.”
“Matilda! Is there anything more?”
“No, dear.”
“Pamby! Is there anything more?”
“No, sir.”
Here the domestic colloquy ends, for the time being. Will any sensitive person—especially a person of my own sex—please to imagine what I must suffer as a delicate single lady, at having all these family details obtruded on my attention, whether I like it or not, in the major’s rasping martial voice, and in the shrill answering screams of the women inside? It is bad enough to be submitted to this sort of persecution when one is alone; but it is far worse to be also exposed to it—as I am constantly—in the presence of visitors, whose conversation is necessarily interrupted, whose ears are necessarily shocked, whose very stay in my house is necessarily shortened by Major Namby’s unendurably public way of managing his private concerns.