see nothing but a muscular-looking man in a blue blouse with a can of
hot water in one hand and a pair of boots in the other. He appeared
to be equally bewildered with myself at the sight of the empty bed.
From a cupboard in the corner came a wail of distress:

"Oh, do send that horrid man away. What's he doing in my room?"

I explained to her afterwards that the chambermaid abroad is always
an active and willing young man. The foreign girl fills in her time
bricklaying and grooming down the horses. It is a young and charming
lady who serves you when you enter the tobacconist's. She doesn't
understand tobacco, is unsympathetic; with Mr. Frederic Harrison,
regards smoking as a degrading and unclean habit; cannot see,
herself, any difference between shag and Mayblossom, seeing that they
are both the same price; thinks you fussy. The corset shop is run by
a most presentable young man in a Vandyck beard. The wife runs the
restaurant; the man does the cooking, and yet the woman has not
reached freedom from bother.

[A brutal suggestion]

It sounds brutal, but perhaps woman was not intended to live free
from all bothers. Perhaps even the higher life--the skirt-dancing
and the poker work--has its bothers. Perhaps woman was intended to
take her share of the world's work--of the world's bothers.



CHAPTER XII