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Machin is indispensable and irreplaceable. I could get forty absolutely loyal secretaries while my wife was unsuccessfully searching for another Machin." "I have an infallible way with parlourmaids," said Miss Warburton. "What is that?" "I listen to their grievances and to their love-affairs." Mr.
But, unfortunately, there is no demand for parlourmaids who can quote 'Hamlet' amid the intervals of waiting at table, or for page-boys capable of spouting 'Paradise Lost' for the intellectual improvement of the servants' hall.
Even to one unaware of the inside facts, it would have been evident that Kingham Manor was throwing its weight about a bit tonight. Lights shone in the windows, music was in the air, and as I drew nearer my ear detected the sibilant shuffling of the feet of butlers, footmen, chauffeurs, parlourmaids, housemaids, tweenies and, I have no doubt, cooks, who were busily treading the measure.
The vacancies are chiefly composed of 13 advertisements, from registry-offices for servants of all capacities, married couples, gardeners, housekeepers, butlers, plain cooks, parlourmaids, housemaids, laundresses, waitresses, barmaids, cooks, laundresses, general servants, nurses, needlewomen, lady-helps . Similar persons are advertised for by private individuals; but besides these, I find: Wanted a bullock-driver, a carter, a coachman, a shoeing smith, three butchers, a bottler, two bakers, innumerable boys, barmen, a compositor, several dressmakers in all departments, half a dozen drapers' assistants, four grooms, sixty navvies in one advertisement, millers, haymakers, woodcutters, spademen, needlewomen, quarrymen, etc., two wheelwrights, a verger at £120 a year, pick and shovel men.
Unlike the shanty in the Richmond Road, nearly every window showed a bright light; and I don't suppose I had waited twenty seconds, though they seemed like a quarter of an hour, when the front door flew open and one of the prettiest parlourmaids I have ever clapped eyes upon came running down the path, and asked, even before she had opened the gate, if the lady had arrived.
No men waited, but very expert parlourmaids. Our meat was usually Welsh mutton I don't know why, unless that mountains have ever been the last refuge of the severer virtues.
He was wearing a Turkish tasselled smoking-cap to cover his baldness, and he had taken off his jacket and put on his light, loose overcoat instead of it, since that was a comfortable habit of his. He sent one of the two parlourmaids upstairs for his carpet slippers out of the carpet-bag, and he passed part of the time in changing his boots for his slippers in front of the fire.
Or it may be that all those men who might be footmen will prefer to earn their livelihood in other ways of life. It may even be that no more parlourmaids and housemaids, even for very illustrious houses, will be forthcoming. I do not profess to foresee. Perhaps things will go on just as before. But remember: things were going on, even then.
"Does that make you feel safe?" he demanded; and then, pointing to a maidservant at the sideboard, he added, "See that parlourmaid? well, she's leaving; yesterday I spent two hours at Mrs. Hunt's registry office interviewing parlourmaids. Now, do you feel safe?" His return to the Admiralty brought him no happiness save when he sent Admiral Sturdee to sea to avenge the death of Admiral Cradock.
Assheton, until her only surviving son Morris had come to live with her some three months ago on the completion of his four years at Cambridge, had been alone, but even when she was alone this ceremony of drawing the cloth and putting on the dessert and wine had never been omitted, though since she never took either, it might seem to be a wasted piece of routine on the part of the two noiseless parlourmaids.
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