“Is this so? I must know a little more of this very-much-behind-the-times country of yours, which you call England. England, as known to us, ceased to exist centuries ago, and yet you have spoken of living in the vicinity of the home of George Stephenson. How this can be, I cannot understand. We know that when he lived, the neighbouring island, now called Teuto-Scotland, was called England. But we also know that hundreds of years are supposed to have passed since the last vestige of Stephenson’s Northumbrian home was destroyed. How do you explain such anomalies?”
So spoke Mr. Saville, and the rest of our conversation consisted of explanations and descriptions on my own part which proved intensely interesting to the Saville family, but which would sound so much like an oft-told tale to my readers, that I refrain from inflicting it upon them.
After all this conversation we were in the mood to enjoy the dainty meal spread before us. The young woman in attendance was one of the employés of the Domestic Agency, and had served Mrs. Saville, to their mutual satisfaction, for five years. She moved about the room with a grace born of her perfect physical training, which I would fain see prevalent in my own country. In response to a question of John Saville’s, she informed us that there was to be a grand amateur theatrical entertainment in the Recreation Hall that evening, at which she intended to be one of the performers.
As she was one of the indoor servants of the Agency, and slept in the building, she was practically at home during most of her hours of recreation, and she spoke with all the verve and vigour of one who enjoyed life to the utmost. She was merry without familiarity; energetic without being fussy; and respectful without being servile—altogether the very _beau idéal_ of a nice-looking and intelligent waiting maid.
As I noted herself and her ways critically, I thought that there was really no reason why we should not establish these Domestic Aid Agencies in England. We are not usually very slow in adopting socially economic ideas which have once suggested themselves to us, and if enterprise and capital united were to take the notion up, the chief sources of English domestic worry would be soon put an end to, as would also the reluctance of respectable girls to adopt what is at present in only too many cases nothing better than a life of dull, miserable slavery.