"There were twenty letters from persons of title. Of course, I thought of Lord Kitchener, and felt it useless to stay, but as I had come the Honourable Mrs. Smith advised me to wait; she was very civil.
"Now, you know my three rules: I won't have mixed religions in the kitchen because of squabbles; I won't take a servant out of a 'flat'; and I don't want one who wears glasses.
"When the paragon and I met under the imitation palm, I found she was all I did not want. She questioned me severely, and said that she was a Roman Catholic. I felt that the religion of a being for whom twenty of the nobility were clamouring was no concern of mine, and I was surprised when she asked me to leave my address. So little did I aspire to the paragon that I did not even ask if she could cook. I passed ladies still arriving, and I was so melancholy that I went home in a 'bus.
"The next morning I had a letter, and I can truly say I never was so flattered in my life, not even when HE asked me to marry him, for the paragon had chosen me out of one hundred and sixty-five ladies, exclusive of twenty of the nobility.
"To be sure, she went against all my principles and I did not even know if she could cook; but she had chosen me!
"So she arrived in company of three cardboard bonnet-boxes and a japanned tin trunk.
"HE suggested that we should try her on a lunch, and we did. Thank goodness, we only had four of his chums, or I should have died of mortification. After all, a clever man is sometimes duller than the dullest woman.
"How she cooked! It was appalling! Our parlour-maid, who has lovely manners, served a series of horrors as if they were a feast for the gods. After luncheon I found cook had broken my best cut-glass salad bowl, and two old Worcester plates, and then finished off with nervous prostration on the kitchen floor. HE and I dined out that night; we had had too much of the comforts of home.
"The next morning the housemaid appeared with joy in her usually blank eyes, and said cook had gone and taken her boxes. At first I thought she had gone to High Mass. But no, she had really gone with her heavy tin trunk and the three bandboxes. How she got them down at midnight over four creaking flights of stairs without being heard, we shall never know, but she did. We found out afterwards that the Honourable Mrs. Smith had had this paragon just one month, and then she was anxious to get rid of her in a hurry; so she advertised. It was cruel, wasn't it? Really, you know, it is wicked of you to complain when a servant has been faithful to you for twenty-six years."