tell their ages. In my last place—Tompkinses'—the oldest daughter, Miss Julia, used to begin a chatterin' to the canary for all she was worth when anybody so much as mentions how old they was, and the way time was passin'. New Year's Eve was the worst, when the bells was tollin'. I've known her wake that poor canary up, when it had gone to bed, and say, 'Dicky, Dicky, pretty Dick,' and it thought the incandescent light was the sun, and had its bath straight away."

"Oh, I'm not so bad as that," I laughed, "I'm twenty-three!"

Amelia blacked her face more than ever in her surprise.

"Bless my soul! Who'd have thought it? In that white dress you wears at night you looks like a bit of a thing who has just got out of pinifores. Twenty-three! You're older than me, and never seed a flue-brush before."

"Perhaps you have always been brought up with them?" I suggested.

"I could handle one at six, or my mother would have let me know what for."

She swelled with pride at the retrospection of her infant capabilities.

"You were evidently most clever. Perhaps you were born grown up. Some people are."

She considered this.

"I was always smart for my years."

"And I wasn't. I think I must have developed slowly, Amelia. When you were cleaning flues I was nursing dolls. Perhaps it was my parents' fault. I was the only child."

"And I'm the eldest of fourteen."

"Dear me!" I said. "And are they all expert flue cleaners?"

"Eight of 'em is in heaven."

She sounded as sure of this point as the exasperating little cottage girl.

"You'd better get on with your work; I'm interrupting you," I said, as I walked to the door.

About every third day I make this remark to Amelia with the faint hope of impressing upon her that I am the mistress of the establishment. Then I carefully close the kitchen door behind me, barricade myself in the dining- or drawing-room, and sit down and think about her. I am sure Amelia has not the slightest idea of how her figure looms in my mental horizon. I don't want to think about her. Dimbie or mother or Nanty are much pleasanter subjects, but I can't help it; she is the sort of person you must think about.

Nanty found her for me.

She said, "You and Dimbie will require someone extremely capable. Amelia Cockles exactly answers to this description."

Now what worries me is whether to sit down quietly and let Amelia manage us and be happy, or whether to endeavour to uphold our dignity and be uncomfortable.

Were I to put such a question to Dimbie he would say, "Let's be happy." But this happiness is qualified when she gives us roly-poly pudding more than once every ten days. It is a pudding for which I have always had a peculiar dislike. I will order, I mean suggest, that we shall have a thatched house pudding for dinner. I mention my liking for brown thatch, not straw-coloured thatch. I sit with an expectant appetite, and a roly-poly appears, white, flabby, and bursting at its ends with raspberry jam. Reproachfully I look at Amelia, but her return gaze is as innocent and ingenuous as a little child's. She would have me believe that I never even so much as mentioned a thatched house pudding. Dimbie sends up his plate for a second helping. While Amelia goes for the cheese course I say, "Do you think you could like roly-poly a little less, only a little less?" And Dimbie, passing up his plate for a third helping, says he will try, but it will be difficult, as Amelia makes such ripping ones, and of course she enters the room at the moment and hears him. She hears everything. I think she must fly between the kitchen and dining-room when she waits at dinner, or have spring boots concealed beneath the hall table.

I happened to mention the roly-poly to Nanty, and she said, "Be thankful she can make a pudding at all, or you might have to make it yourself." There was an assumption in her manner that I couldn't, and I didn't argue the point. It is useless arguing with Nanty.

There is another point in Amelia's disfavour to put against her admitted capability—she squeaks. Her shoes squeak and her corsets creak, and her breathing is conducted in a series of gasps—long ones when she sweeps a room, short ones when she hands the potatoes at dinner. She seems to want oiling at every point of vantage, like a bicycle. Sometimes I lie awake at night and discuss or try to discuss with Dimbie the possibilities of stopping the squeaking.

"Tell her to wear cloth boots like your mother."

"Mother doesn't wear cloth boots," I contradict.

"I thought you said she did," he murmurs sleepily.

"No, our servants wear them."

"Well, tell Amelia to do the same."

"She won't."

"Then I give it up."

"Dimbie," I say coaxingly, "before you go quite, quite off, couldn't you suggest a remedy for squeaking? Oil would spoil the carpets."

"Fill 'em with corn," comes the amazing suggestion.

"You put corn in wet shoes, dear donkey," I shout, trying to clutch him back from that beautiful land of oblivion to which all of us, happy or unhappy, healthy or sick, young or old, are so glad to go, when like little children we are just tired. But he had gone. Nothing short of a thunderbolt would bring him back till the morrow.

And when that morrow came I suggested to Amelia that she should dip the shoes into water.

"Why not boil 'em, mum, with a little washing powder?"

Her face was stolid, but there was a hint of irony in her voice. With dignity I walked from the kitchen, barricaded myself, and once again sat down to think about her. The squeaking was unendurable; the creaking of the corsets was nearly as bad. For these two things I could not give her notice; besides, I should never dare to give anybody notice.

A little later on I caught her in the hall in an old pair of wool-work slippers embroidered with tea-roses which had belonged to Dimbie, but which I had surreptitiously banished to the boxroom. She was in the midst of a cake-walk; her chest was stuck out like a pouter pigeon's, and one tea-rose was poised high in the air.

"Amelia!" I shouted, scandalised, "what are you dreaming of? Have you taken leave of your senses?"

She brought the tea-rose to earth with a bang, and stood like a soldier at attention.

"Beg pardon, mum. Didn't know you was there, or I wouldn't have done it. But I was so happy at thinkin' how pleased you would be in seein' me in these here shoes, as you have took such a dislike to the others."

"But I'm not pleased," I rejoined. "I could not think of permit—of approving of your wearing wool-work slippers for answering the front-door bell."

"It never rings, mum."

"It will when callers begin to arrive; and when you receive your next month's wages I shall be glad, Amelia, if you will buy a pair of cloth flat-heeled boots or shoes. Kid are expensive, but cloth is beautifully cheap."

"You mentioned them before, mum. P'r'aps you'll remember. I never have and never could wear black cloth shoes. It would be like walkin' about with a pair of funerals on your feet. They'd depress a nigger minstrel. Anything else to meet you. White tennis shoes? They're soft and don't squeak."

"No, Amelia," I said wearily, "white tennis shoes would be worse than the wool-work. We'll dismiss the subject. It is said that a man can get accustomed even to being hanged. I may learn to like your shoes in time, and even regard their noisiness as music."

And I went back to the drawing-room and closed the door. The subject was finished, and so Amelia continues to squeak.

CHAPTER IV

DIMBIE'S BIRTHDAY

I find, in accordance with Nanty's advice, that I kept Dimbie well out of the last chapter; but he's bound to figure pretty largely in this, for he's had a birthday. A birthday cannot very well be touched upon without referring to the person interested, and Dimbie was