“‘Yes, sir,’ came back the muffled answer.  ’Will you please let me out; you’ll find the key on the ground near the door.’

“I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her.  ’Who locked you in there?’ I asked.

“‘I did, sir,’ she replied; ’I locked myself in, and pushed the key out under the door.  I had to do it, or I should have gone off with those beastly soldiers.’

“‘I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you, sir,’ she added, stepping out; ’I left the lunch all laid.’”

Amenda’s passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment.  Towards all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of callous unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were numerous) were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to seriously shock Ethelbertha.

When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher—­with a milkman in reserve.  For Amenda’s sake we dealt with the man, but we never liked him, and we liked his pork still less.  When, therefore, Amenda announced to us that her engagement with him was “off,” and intimated that her feelings would in no way suffer by our going elsewhere for our bacon, we secretly rejoiced.

[Illustration:  “HER ENGAGEMENT WAS ‘OFF.’”]

“I am confident you have done right, Amenda,” said Ethelbertha; “you would never have been happy with that man.”

“No, mum, I don’t think I ever should,” replied Amenda.  “I don’t see how any girl could as hadn’t got the digestion of an ostrich.”

Ethelbertha looked puzzled.  “But what has digestion got to do with it?” she asked.

“A pretty good deal, mum,” answered Amenda, “when you’re thinking of marrying a man as can’t make a sausage fit to eat.”

“But, surely,” exclaimed Ethelbertha, “you don’t mean to say you’re breaking off the match because you don’t like his sausages!”

“Well, I suppose that’s what it comes to,” agreed Amenda, unconcernedly.

“What an awful idea!” sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause.  “Do you think you ever really loved him?”

“Oh, yes,” said Amenda, “I loved him right enough, but it’s no good loving a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you awake all night.”

“But does he want you to live on sausages?” persisted Ethelbertha.

“Oh, he doesn’t say anything about it,” explained Amenda; “but you know what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher:  you’re expected to eat what’s left over.  That’s the mistake my poor cousin Eliza made.  She married a muffin man.  Of course, what he didn’t sell they had to finish up themselves.  Why, one winter, when he had a run of bad luck, they lived for two months on nothing but muffins.  I never saw a girl so changed in all my life.  One has to think of these things, you know.”

Later on, she engaged herself to a solicitor’s messenger.  She did this—­as she frankly avowed to Ethelbertha—­to assist her family, who were prosecuting some petty law case at the time.  He was a smart, steady man, a great favourite with his employers, and, out of kindly feeling towards him, they did the business for Amenda’s father, charging only “out-of-pockets.”