helbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and enquire for her. I was
sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and
innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, enquiring for a
lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I'd rather not.

"Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go she
would go herself. I replied that I thought one female member of my
household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not to.
Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by haughtily
declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her
unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after which
Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat (who
didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate after the
lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the day-before-
yesterday's newspaper.

[Illustration: "'WHO LOCKED YOU IN THERE?'"]

"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the faint cry
of a female in distress. I listened attentively, and the cry was
repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where it came
from I could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as I approached the
bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a small wooden shed,
used by the proprietor of the house as a dark room for developing
photographs.

"The door was locked. 'Is that you, Amenda?' I cried through the
keyhole.

"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me out;
you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'

"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her. 'Who
locked you in there?' I asked.

"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the key out
under the door. I had to do it, or I should have gone off with those
beastly soldiers.'

"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping out; 'I
left the lunch all laid.'"

Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment. Towards
all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of callous
unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were numerous)
were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to seriously
shock Ethelbertha.

When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher--with a milkman in
reserve. For Amenda's sake we dealt with the man, but we never liked
him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore, Amen