I often wonder where all the stickiness comes from that she manages to communicate from her person to the handles of doors, backs of chairs and other such places where you are most likely to set your hand unconsciously.  Henry has a theory about it oozing from the pores of her skin, and says she conceals some inexhaustible sources of grime which is constantly rising to the surface.  In which case you can’t entirely blame The Kid.

Under the circumstances, however, we feel that she ought to practise more restraint.  Always when she is most thickly coated in dirt and varnished with the glutinous substance already referred to, does she most strongly feel the calls of affection.  Then is the moment when she flings her arms about Henry and presses long kisses on his clean collar, or gently caresses the entire surface of my new blouse.  Nothing, I have remarked, can stir her demonstrative nature so much as the sight of Henry and me arrayed in all the glory of evening attire.  The merest glimpse of my georgette theatre gown, or the chaste folds of Henry’s tie, scintillating collar and shirt front send her flying to us with hands that fondle and lips that cling.  If we repel her and compromise by kissing the middle of her head, she has a way of giving us haunting looks that, after we have sallied forth to the halls of pleasure, can make us feel uncomfortable for the entire evening.

‘Yes, when The Kid is grown up,’ Henry went on, ’perhaps she’ll have the success that has been denied to us, old girl.’

I was about to reply when my attention was arrested by a confused murmur of voices in the hall.  I distinguished Elizabeth’s, and as the other was a man’s tones, I supposed she was having a little badinage at the side door with one of the tradesmen, as is her wont.  As in time it did not die away, but began to get a little more heated (one voice appearing to be raised in entreaty and the other, Elizabeth’s, in protest), I thought I had better saunter out and interrupt the causerie.  Elizabeth has occasionally to be reminded of her work in this manner.  She is too fond of gossiping.

I opened the door ostentatiously and sallied out—­just in time to see Elizabeth playfully pulling William by the beard.  ’You get them whiskers orf—­narsty, rarspin’ things,’ she was saying.

It was an awful moment.  Elizabeth had the grace to look ashamed of herself for once, and drifted back to her sink without a word.  As for William, he appeared thoroughly unnerved.  He tottered towards me.  ‘Let me explain,’ he began.

‘William!’ I said in stern tones.  Then again, ‘William!’ He wilted under my gaze.  ‘I should never have thought such a thing of you,’ I continued.

He pointed with a finger that trembled in the direction of the kitchen.  ’That girl has no respect for any one or anything in the world.  Traditions, class distinctions are as nothing to her.  She would put out her tongue at Homer.’