jection to dust. I rather think it
cheers her up to see it about the place. Obviously she had come in to make
conversation. I laid down my pen with a sigh.

"I yeerd from my young man this morning," she began. A chill foreboding
swept over me. (I will explain why in a minute.)

"Do you mean the boiler one?" I asked.

"'Im wot belongs to the Amalgamated Serciety of Boilermakers," she
corrected with dignity. "Well, they've moved 'is 'eadquarters from London
to Manchester."

There was a tense silence, broken only by Elizabeth's hard breathing on a
brass paper-weight ere she polished it with her sleeve.

"If 'e goes to Manchester, there I goes," she went on; "I suppose I'd quite
easy get a situation there?"

"Quite easy," I acquiesced in a hollow voice.

She went out leaving me chill and dejected. Not that I thought for one
moment that I was in imminent danger of losing her. I knew full well that
this was but a ruse on the part of the young man to disembarrass himself of
Elizabeth, and, if he had involved the entire Amalgamated Society of
Boilermakers in the plot, that only proved how desperate he was.

I have very earnest reasons for wishing that Elizabeth could have a
"settled" young man. You see, she never retains the same one for many weeks
at a time. It isn't her fault, poor girl. She would be as true as steel if
she had a chance; she would cling to any one of them through thick and
thin, following him to the ends of the earth if necessary.

It is they who are fickle, and the excuses they make to break away from her
are both varied and ingenious. During the War of course they always had the
pretext of being ordered to the Front at a moment's notice, and were not,
it appears, allowed to write home on account of the Censor. Elizabeth used
to blame LLOYD GEORGE for these defects of organisation. And to this day
she is extremely bitter against the Government.

In fact, she is bitter against everyone when her love affairs are not
running smoothly. The entire household suffers in consequence. She is
sullen and obstinate; she is always on the verge of giving notice. And the
way she breaks things in her abstraction is awful. Elizabeth's illusions
and my crockery always get shattered together. My rose-bowl of Venetian
glass got broken when the butcher threw her over for the housemaid
next-door. Half-a-dozen tumblers, a basin and several odd plates came in
two in her hands after the grocer's assistant went away suddenl