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.'