In fact, she is bitter against every one when her love affairs are not running smoothly.  The entire household suffers in consequence.  She is sullen and obstinate; she is always on the verge of giving notice.  And the way she breaks things in her abstraction is awful.  Elizabeth’s illusions and my crockery always get shattered together.  My rose-bowl of Venetian glass got broken when the butcher threw her over for the housemaid next door.  Half a dozen tumblers, a basin and several odd plates came in two in her hands after the grocer’s assistant went away suddenly to join the silent Navy.  And nearly the whole of a dinner service was sacrificed when Lloyd George peremptorily ordered her young man in the New Army to go to Mesopotamia and stay there for at least three years without leave.

Those brief periods when Elizabeth’s young men are in the incipient stages of paying her marked attention are agreeable to everybody.  Elizabeth, feeling no doubt in her rough untutored way that God’s in his Heaven and all’s right with the world, sings at her work; she shows extraordinary activity when going about her duties.  She does unusual things like remembering to polish the brasses every week—­indeed, you have only to step in the hall and glance at the stair rods to discover the exact stage of her latest ‘affair.’  I remember once when one ardent swain (who she declared was ‘in the flying corpse’) got to the length of offering her marriage before he flew away, she cleaned the entire house down in her enthusiasm—­and had actually got to the cellars before he vanished out of her life.

You will now understand why I was dejected at the perfidy of the follower belonging to the Boilermakers’ Society.  I saw a dreary period of discomfort ahead of me.  Worst of all I was expecting the Boscombes to dinner that very week.  They had not before visited us, and Henry was anxious to impress Mr. Boscombe, he being a publisher.  It is surprising, when you come to think of it, how full the world is of writers trying to make a good impression on publishers.  Yet no one has met the publisher who ever tries to make a good impression on any one.

I will not elaborate the situation as it stood.  All I can say is that there is no earthly possibility of making a good impression on any living thing if Elizabeth is in one of her bad moods.  And it would be no use explaining the case to Mrs. Boscombe, because she has no sense of humour; or to Mr. Boscombe, because he likes a good dinner.

Finally, the Domestic Bureau failed me.  Hitherto they had always been able to supply me with a temporary waitress on the occasion of dinner parties.  Now it appeared these commodities had become pearls of great price which could no longer be cast before me and mine (at the modest fee of ten shillings a night) without at least fourteen days’ notice.

The Bureau promised to do its best for me, of course, but reminded me that women were scarce.  I asked, with bitterness, what had become of the surplus million we heard so much about.  They replied with politeness that, judging from the number of applications received, they must be the million in search of domestics.