only she failed,
failed more completely than any servant I have ever known. She would
not make my shaving-water really hot.

Cursed by nature with an iron-filings beard and a delicate tender
skin, I was a man for whom it was impossible to shave with comfort in
anything but absolutely boiling water. Yet morning after morning I
sprang from my bed to find the contents of my jug just a little over
or under the tepid mark. There was no question of re-heating the
water on the gas stove, for I never allowed myself more than the very
minimum of time for dressing, swallowing my breakfast and catching my
train. It was torture.

I spoke to Emily about it, mildly at first, more forcibly as the weeks
wore on, passionately at last. She apologised, she sighed, she wrung
her hands. Once she wept--shed hot scalding tears, tears I could
gladly have shaved in had they fallen half-an-hour earlier. But it
made no difference; next morning my water was as chill as ever.
I could not understand it. Every day my wrath grew blacker, my
reproaches more vehement.

Finally an hour came when I said to my wife, "One of two things must
happen. Either that girl goes or I grow a beard."

Mildred shook her head. "We can't possibly part with her. We should
never get another servant like her."

"Very well," I said.

On the morrow I started for my annual holiday, alone. It was late
summer. I journeyed into the wilds of Wiltshire. I took two rooms in
an isolated cottage, and on the first night of my stay, before getting
into bed, I threw my looking-glass out of the window. Next morning
I began. Day by day I tramped the surrounding country, avoiding all
intercourse with humanity, and day by day my beard grew.

I could feel it growing, and the first scrubbiness of it filled me
with rage. But as time slipped by it became softer and more pliable,
and ceased to irritate me. Freed, too, from the agony of shaving, I
soon found myself eating my breakfast in a more equable frame of mind
than I had enjoyed for years. I began also to notice in my walks all
sorts of things that had not struck me at first--the lark a-twitter
in the blue, the good smell of wet earth after rain, the pale gold of
ripening wheat. And at last, before ever I saw it, very gradually I
came to love my beard, to love the warm comfort and cosiness of it,
and to wonder half timidly what it looked like.

When I left, just before my departure for the six-miles-distant
station, I called for a