I was sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, inquiring for a lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I'd rather not.
Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go she would go herself. I replied that I thought one female member of my household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not to. Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by haughtily declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after which Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat (who didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate after the lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the day-before-yesterday's newspaper.
"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the faint cry of a female in distress. I listened attentively, and the cry was repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where it came from I could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as Iapproached the bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a small wooden shed, used by the proprietor of the house as a dark-room for developing photographs.
"The door was locked. 'Is that you, Amenda?' I cried through the keyhole.
"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me out? you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'
"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her.
'Who locked you in?' I asked.
"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the key out under the door. I had to do it, or I should have gone off with those beastly soldiers.'
"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping out; 'I left the lunch all laid.'"Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment.
Towards all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of callous unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were numerous) were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to seriously shock Ethelbertha.
When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher--with a milkman in reserve. For Amenda's sake we dealt with the man, but we never liked him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore, Amenda announced to us that her engagement with him was "off," and intimated that her feelings would in no way suffer by our going elsewhere for our bacon, we secretly rejoiced.
"I am confident you have done right, Amenda," said Ethelbertha; "you would never have been happy with that man.""No, mum, I don't think I ever should," replied Amenda. "I don't see how any girl could as hadn't the digestion of an ostrich."Ethelbertha looked puzzled. "But what has digestion got to do with it?" she asked.
"A pretty good deal, mum," answered Amenda, "when you're thinking of marrying a man as can't make a sausage fit to eat.""But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say you're breaking off the match because you don't like his sausages!""Well, I suppose that's what it comes to," agreed Amenda, unconcernedly.
"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause.
"Do you think you ever really loved him?""Oh yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no good loving a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you awake all night.""But does he want you to live on sausages?" persisted Ethelbertha.
"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you know what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher; you're expected to eat what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza made. She married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they had to finish up themselves. Why, one winter, when he had a run of bad luck, they lived for two months on nothing but muffins.
I never saw a girl so changed in all my life. One has to think of these things, you know."But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever entered into, was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in the north of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her because of the shop, so once a week she used to go down to him.
