Our Elizabeth | Page 3

anxious?'
Perhaps you prefer Henry in the former role. Frankly, I did not. 'You needn't be so impatient,' I retorted. 'I expect you've gorged yourself on a good lunch in town. Anyhow, it won't take long to get dinner, as we're having tinned soup and eggs.'
'Oh, damn eggs,' said Henry. 'I'm sick of the sight of 'em.'
You can see for yourself how unrestrained we were getting. The thin veneer of civilization (thinner than ever when Henry is hungry) was fast wearing into holes. There was a pause, and then I coldly remarked: 'You didn't kiss me when you came in.'
It was a custom to which I was determined to cling with grim resolution. If I allowed his treatment of me to become too casual we might continue to drift apart even when we had some one to do the washing-up.
Henry came over to me and bestowed a labial salute. It is the only adequate description I can give of the performance. Then I went to the kitchen and got out the cookery-book.
It is a remarkable thing that I am never able to cook anything without the aid of the book. Even if I prepare the same dish seven times a week I must have the printed instructions constantly before me, or I am lost. This is especially strange, because I have a retentive memory for other things. My mind is crammed with odd facts retained from casual reading. If you asked me, the date of the Tai-ping Rebellion (though you're not likely to) I could tell you at once that it originated in 1850 and was not suppressed until 1864, for I remember reading about it in a dentist's waiting-room when I was fifteen. Yet although I prepared scrambled eggs one hundred times in six months (Henry said it was much oftener than that) I had to pore over the instructions as earnestly when doing my 'century' as on the first occasion.
The subsequent meal was taken in silence. The hay-fever from which I am prone to suffer at all seasons of the year was particularly persistent that evening. A rising irritability, engendered by leathery eggs and fostered by Henry's expression, was taking possession of me. Quite suddenly I discovered that the way he held his knife annoyed me. Further, his manner of eating soup maddened me. But I restrained myself. I merely remarked: 'You have finished your soup, I hear, love.' We had not yet reached the stage of open rupture when I could exclaim: 'For goodness' sake stop swilling down soup like a grampus!' I have never heard a grampus take soup. But the expression seems picturesque.
Henry, too, had not quite lost his fortitude. My hay-fever was obviously annoying him, but he only commented: 'Don't you think you ought to go to a doctor--a really reliable man--with that distressing nasal complaint of yours, my dear?' I knew, however, that he was longing to bark out: 'Can't you do something to stop that everlasting sniffing? It's driving me mad, woman.'
How long would it be before we reached this stage of debacle? I brooded. Then the front door bell rang.
'You go,' I said to Henry.
'No, you go,' he replied. 'It looks bad for a man if he is master of the house to answer the door.'
I do not know why it should look bad for a man to answer his own door unless he is a bad man. But there are some things in our English social system which will ever remain unquestioned. I rose and went to open the front door. The light from the hall lamp fell dimly on a lank female form which stood on the doorstep. Out of the dusk a voice spoke to me. It said, 'I think you're wantin' a cook-general?'
I cried out in a loud voice, saying, 'I am.'
'Well, I'm Elizabeth Renshaw. You wrote to me. I got your letter sent on from the Registry Office along with ninety others. But I liked yours the best, so I thought there'd be no 'arm in coming to see----'
'Come in, Elizabeth,' I said earnestly. 'I'm glad you liked my letter.'
I began to wonder if I was not a great writer after all.
CHAPTER II
I piloted Elizabeth in and bade her be seated. Strangely enough, my usual hopeful expectations entirely deserted me at that moment. I felt that the interview would be fruitless. They say hope springs eternal in the human breast, but my breast didn't feel human just then. It was throbbing with savage and sanguinary thoughts. Perhaps it was the eggs. Many animals are rendered ferocious by an over-diet of meat. I can testify (so can Henry) that an over-diet of eggs has exactly the same effect on human beings. I think they stimulate the wrong kind of phagocytes. They can make the mildest and most forgiving