Ethelbertha replied that of course I knew what she meant.  She said that she was not thinking of me, and that Jephson was, no doubt, sensible enough (Jephson is engaged), but she did not see the object of bringing half the parish into it. (Nobody suggested bringing “half the parish” into it.  Ethelbertha will talk so wildly.) To suppose that Brown and MacShaughnassy could be of any use whatever, she considered absurd.  What could a couple of raw bachelors know about life and human nature?  As regarded MacShaughnassy in particular, she was of opinion that if we only wanted out of him all that he knew, and could keep him to the subject, we ought to be able to get that into about a page.

My wife’s present estimate of MacShaughnassy’s knowledge is the result of reaction.  The first time she ever saw him, she and he got on wonderfully well together; and when I returned to the drawing-room, after seeing him down to the gate, her first words were, “What a wonderful man that Mr. MacShaughnassy is.  He seems to know so much about everything.”

That describes MacShaughnassy exactly.  He does seem to know a tremendous lot.  He is possessed of more information than any man I ever came across.  Occasionally, it is correct information; but, speaking broadly, it is remarkable for its marvellous unreliability.  Where he gets it from is a secret that nobody has ever yet been able to fathom.

Ethelbertha was very young when we started housekeeping. (Our first butcher very nearly lost her custom, I remember, once and for ever by calling her “Missie,” and giving her a message to take back to her mother.  She arrived home in tears.  She said that perhaps she wasn’t fit to be anybody’s wife, but she did not see why she should be told so by the tradespeople.) She was naturally somewhat inexperienced in domestic affairs, and, feeling this keenly, was grateful to any one who would give her useful hints and advice.  When MacShaughnassy came along he seemed, in her eyes, a sort of glorified Mrs. Beeton.  He knew everything wanted to be known inside a house, from the scientific method of peeling a potato to the cure of spasms in cats, and Ethelbertha would sit at his feet, figuratively speaking, and gain enough information in one evening to make the house unlivable in for a month.

He told her how fires ought to be laid.  He said that the way fires were usually laid in this country was contrary to all the laws of nature, and he showed her how the thing was done in Crim Tartary, or some such place, where the science of laying fires is alone properly understood.  He proved to her that an immense saving in time and labour, to say nothing of coals, could be effected by the adoption of the Crim Tartary system; and he taught it to her then and there, and she went straight downstairs and explained it to the girl.

Amenda, our then “general,” was an extremely stolid young person, and, in some respects, a model servant.  She never argued.  She never seemed to have any notions of her own whatever.  She accepted our ideas without comment, and carried them out with such pedantic precision and such evident absence of all feeling of responsibility concerning the result as to surround our home legislation with quite a military atmosphere.