Our little servant-girl was married—married to the young man who brought the milk of a morning. The courtship had been going on for some time before I realised the glorious things that were happening. Then, when I was told about it, I used to peep out of my bedroom window. As soon as I heard that cry of his—impossible to write—when he opened the gate and rattled with his can down the area steps, then up I jumped from my bed and lifted the window.
They must have been wonderful moments for Emily, those early mornings when, with heart beating at the sound of his cry, she had run for the big white jug, then dragged out the time lest he should think she had opened the door too eagerly.
Many a time have I seen them down at the bottom of those area steps; she leaning up against the pillar of the door watching him, rapt in admiration, while he filled up the big white jug.
It is a fine thing for you when your little maid has eyes for the milkman. You get a good measure, I can tell you. He would not seem stingy to her for the world. I have seen him dipping his little half-pint measure times and again into the big can as he talked to her and, as she held out the white jug, just trickling it in till our two pints were more than accounted for.
All this went on for weeks together. Emily sang like a lark in the morning when she rose betimes to do her work. The worst of the scrubbing was all finished with and Emily’s hair was tidy long before there came that weird falsetto cry, or the sound of the milk cans rattled down the area steps. Oh, I can assure you, it is an excellent thing when your little maid has eyes for the milkman. She never gets up late of a morning.
And then, at last, with great to-doings in Emily’s home out at Walham Green, they were married. I asked Emily what she would like for a wedding present and she said:
“I’d like one o’ them old brass candlesticks—same as what you ’ave in your study.”
You see Emily had acquired some taste. I call it taste because it is mine. Good or bad, she had acquired it.
“Wouldn’t you prefer silver?” I asked, thinking I knew what silver would mean in Walham Green.
“No—I like the brass ones—’cos they’re old. I’ve a fancy for old things.”
So a pair of old brass candlesticks was what I gave her. She wrote and thanked me for them. She said they looked just lovely on George’s writing table and that one of these days, when I was passing that way, I ought to go and look at them.