* * * * *

=EMILY'S MISSION.=

It was all through Emily that I am to-day the man I am.

We were extraordinarily lucky to get her; there was no doubt about
that. Her testimonials or character or references or whatever it is
that they come to you with were just the last word. Even the head of
the registry-office, a frigid thin-lipped lady of some fifty winters,
with an unemotional cold-mutton eye, was betrayed, in speaking of
Emily, into a momentary lapse from the studied English of her normal
vocabulary.

"Madam," she said to my wife, "I have known many housemaids, but never
one like this. She is, I assure you, Madam, absolutely IT."

So we engaged her; and ere long I came to hate her with a hatred such
as I trust I shall never again cherish for any human being.

In almost every respect she proved perfection. She was honest, she
was quick, she was clean; she loved darning my socks and ironing my
handkerchiefs; she never sulked, she never smashed, her hair never
wisped (a thing I loathe in housemaids). In one point only she failed,
failed more completely than any servant I have ever known. She would
not make my shaving-water really hot.

Cursed by nature with an iron-filings beard and a delicate tender
skin, I was a man for whom it was impossible to shave with comfort in