tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">'I suppose I'm shocking you terribly.'

A slight lowering of the left eye-lid.

Henry, being a Scotsman, likes argument.

'A fair razzle-dazzle.'

She dashed from the room in a spasm of mirth.

'Am I not a suitable wife for Henry?'

'Carn't you get rid of 'er?'

'Stop, William!' Marion said.

'Oo ses the Signs is wrong?'

''Ere's to us, all of us!'

OUR ELIZABETH

CHAPTER I

If you ask Henry he will tell you that I cannot cook. In fact, he will tell you even if you don't ask. To hold up my culinary failures to ridicule is one of his newest forms of humour (new to Henry, I mean—the actual jokes you will have learned already at your grandmother's knee).

I had begun to see that I must either get a servant soon or a judicial separation from Henry. That was the stage at which I had arrived. Things were getting beyond me. By 'things' I mean the whole loathsome business of housework. My métier is to write—not that I am a great writer as yet, though I hope to be some day. What I never hope to be is a culinary expert. Should you command your cook to turn out a short story she could not suffer more in the agonies of composition than I do in making a simple Yorkshire pudding.

Henry does not like housework any more than I do; he says the performance of menial duties crushes his spirit—but he makes such a fuss about things. You might think, to hear him talk, that getting up coal, lighting fires, chopping wood and cleaning flues, knives and brasses were the entire work of a household instead of being mere incidents in the daily routine. If he had had to tackle my duties … but men never understand how much there is to do in a house.

Even when they do lend a hand my experience is that they invariably manage to hurt themselves in some way. Henry seems incapable of getting up coal without dropping the largest knob on his foot. If he chops wood he gashes himself; he cannot go through the simple rite of pouring boiling water out of a saucepan without getting scalded; and when he mounts the steps to adjust the blinds I always keep the brandy uncorked in readiness; you see, he declares that a chap needs something to pull himself together after a fall from a step-ladder.

Perhaps you trace in all this a certain bitterness, a veiled antagonism on my part towards Henry; you may even imagine that we are a bickering sort of couple, constantly trying to get the better of each other. If so, you are mistaken. Up to six months before this story opens our married life had been ideal—for which reason I didn't open the story earlier. Ideal marriages (to any one except the contracting parties) are uninteresting affairs. It is such a pity that the good, the laudable, things in life generally are.

One of the reasons why our union was ideal (up to six months before this story opens) was that we shared identical tastes. Comradeship is the true basis of—but perhaps you have read my articles on the subject on the Woman's Page of the Daily Trail. I always advise girls to marry men of their own temperament. As a matter of fact, I expect they marry the men who are easiest to land, but you're not allowed to say things like that (on the Woman's Page). We have pure and noble ideals, we are tender, motherly and housewifely (on the Woman's Page).

Henry and I were of the same temperament. For one thing, we were equally incompetent at golf. Perhaps I foozled my drive rather worse than Henry, but then he never took fewer than five strokes on the green, whereas I have occasionally done it in four. Then we mutually detested gramophones. But when we discovered that we could both play 'Caller Herrin'' on the piano with one finger (entirely by ear) we felt that we were affinities, and got married shortly afterwards.

Stevenson once said, 'Marriage is not a bed of roses; it is a field of battle.' At the epoch of which I write Henry and I had not got to turning machine-guns on each other. At the most we only had diplomatic unpleasantnesses. The position, however, was getting strained. I realized quite clearly that if we didn't obtain domestic help of some sort very soon it might come to open hostilities. Isn't it surprising how the petty annoyances of life can wear away the strong bulwarks of trust and friendship formed by years of understanding? Our particular bulwarks were becoming quite shaky through nothing else but having to muddle through the dull sordid grind of cooking and housework by ourselves. We were getting disillusioned with each other. No 'jaundiced eye that casts discolouration' could look more jaundiced than Henry's when I asked him to dry up the dinner things.

Having explained all this, you will now understand something of my feelings when, on going to answer a knock at the door, I was confronted by a solid female who said she had been sent from the Registry Office. Oh, thrice blessed Registry Office that had answered my call.

'Come in,' I said eagerly, and, leading the way into the dining-room, I seated myself before her. With lowered eyes and modest mien I was, of course, waiting for her to speak first. I did not wait long. Her voice, concise and direct, rapped out: 'So you require a cook-general?'

'Yes—er—please,' I murmured. Under her searching gaze my knees trembled, my pulses throbbed, a slight perspiration broke out on my forehead. My whole being seemed to centre itself in the mute inquiry: 'Shall I suit?'

There was a pause while the applicant placed her heavy guns. Then she opened fire immediately. 'I suppose you have outside daily help?'

'Er—no,' I confessed.

'Then you have a boy to do the windows, knives and boots?'

'No.'

'Do you send everything to the laundry?'

'Well … no … not quite.' I wanted to explain, to modify, to speak airily of woollens being 'just rubbed through,' but she hurried me forward.

'Have you a hot water circulator?'

'No.'

'A gas cooking-range?'

'No.'

It was terrible. I seemed to have nothing. I stood, as it were, naked to the world, bereft of a single inducement to hold out to the girl.

'Do you dine late?'

At this point, when I longed to answer 'No,' I was compelled to say 'Yes.' That decided her. She rose at once and moved towards the door. 'I'm afraid your situation won't do for me,' she remarked.

That was all she