ILLUSTRATIONS

Our Elizabeth . . . . . . Frontispiece

   Henry and I looked at the Cookery Book

   The Kid

   A Bad Sign

   Marion dropped fifteen stitches

   Our Friend William

   ’Wot’s ‘orrible about it?’

   ‘Oh, must I, Mama?’

   ‘’E was starin’ at it wild-like.’

   ‘Do you mean the boiler one?’ I asked.

   ‘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 metier 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.