I hear his wife's voice--a shockingly shrill one; but what can you expect of a woman who has been seen over and over again, in a slatternly striped wrapper, as late as two o'clock in the afternoon--I hear his wife's voice answer from inside the house:
"It's south-east. I won't have Georgina taken out to-day." (Georgina is one of the first Mrs. Namby's family, and they are all weak in the chest.) "Where's nurse?"
"Nurse, I won't have Jack allowed to run. Whenever that boy perspires, he catches cold. Hang up his hoop. If he cries, take him into my dressing-room, and show him the birch rod. Matilda!"
"What the devil do they mean by daubing all that grease over Mary's hair? It's beastly to see it--do you hear?--beastly! Where's Pamby?" (Pamby is the unfortunate work-woman who makes and mends the family linen.)
No answer. Pamby, or somebody else, giggles faintly. The major flourishes his cane in a fury.
"Why the devil don't you answer me? I give you three seconds to answer me, or leave the house. One--two--three. Pamby! what are you about now?"
"If you please, sir, I'm doing something----"
"Drop it directly, whatever it is. Matilda! how many pair of trousers has Katie got?"
"Shorten all Miss Katie's trousers directly, including the pair she's got on. I've said, over and over again, that I won't have those frills of hers any lower down than her knees. Don't let me see them at the middle of her shins again. Nurse!"
"Mind the crossings. Don't let the children sit down if they're hot. Don't let them speak to other children. Don't let them get playing with strange dogs. Don't let them mess their things. And, above all, don't bring Master Jack back in a perspiration. Is there anything more, before I go out?"
Here the domestic colloquy ends, for the time being. Will any sensitive person--especially a person of my own sex--please to imagine what I must suffer, as a delicate single lady, at having all these family details obtruded on my attention, whether I like it or not, in the major's rasping martial voice, and in the shrill answering screams of the women inside? It is bad enough to be submitted to this sort of persecution when one is alone; but it is far worse to be also exposed to it--as I am constantly--in the presence of visitors, whose conversation is necessarily interrupted, whose ears are necessarily shocked, whose very stay in my house is necessarily shortened, by Major Namby's unendurably public way of managing his private concerns.