his manner of eating soup maddened me. But I restrained
myself. I merely remarked: 'You have finished your soup, I _hear_,
love.' We had not yet reached the stage of open rupture when I could
exclaim: 'For goodness' sake stop swilling down soup like a grampus!'
I have never heard a grampus take soup. But the expression seems
picturesque.

Henry, too, had not quite lost his fortitude. My hay-fever was
obviously annoying him, but he only commented: 'Don't you think you
ought to go to a doctor--a really reliable man--with that distressing
nasal complaint of yours, my dear?' I knew, however, that he was
longing to bark out: 'Can't you do something to stop that everlasting
sniffing? It's driving me mad, woman.'

How long would it be before we reached this stage of debacle? I
brooded. Then the front door bell rang.

'You go,' I said to Henry.

'No, you go,' he replied. 'It looks bad for a man if he is master of
the house to answer the door.'

I do not know why it should look bad for a man to answer his own door
unless he is a bad man. But there are some things in our English
social system which will ever remain unquestioned. I rose and went to
open the front door. The light from the hall lamp fell dimly on a lank
female form which stood on the doorstep. Out of the dusk a voice spoke
to me. It said, 'I think you're wantin' a cook-general?'

I cried out in a loud voice, saying, 'I am.'

'Well, I'm Elizabeth Renshaw. You wrote to me. I got your letter sent
on from the Registry Office along with ninety others. But I liked
yours the best, so I thought there'd be no 'arm in coming to see----'

'Come in, Elizabeth,' I said earnestly. 'I'm glad you liked my letter.'

I began to wonder if I was not a great writer after all.

CHAPTER II

I piloted Elizabeth in and bade her be seated. Strangely enough, my
usual hopeful expectations entirely deserted me at that moment. I felt
that the interview would be fruitless. They say hope springs eternal
in the human breast, but my breast didn't feel human just then. It was
throbbing with savage and sanguinary thoughts. Perhaps it was the
eggs. Many animals are rendered ferocious by an over-diet of meat. I
can testify (so can Henry) that an over-diet of eggs has exactly the
same effect on human beings. I think they stimulate the wrong kind of
phagocytes. They can make the mildest and most forgiving person wild
and vindictive. Henry always declares, w