"I never shall," Grizel assured him. "Scrags are my line. Scrags are much easier to deal with. Scrags can always be mitigated if you lavish enough money; it's the plain coat and skirt that's the devil. I'd like to found a charity for the supply of draped garments to the thin wives of clergymen. _Can't_ you see them,--in navy-blue serge, with flannel shirts falling well in at the chest? It must have a depressing effect on the sermons! ... What was I talking of last! It's rather difficult to keep count." "The superiority of middle-aged men over their wives. Wasn't that it?" "I never said they were superior. They're not, but they look it, and that's an extra burden on the wives. It proves without any doubt soever that women's work is more exhausting than men's." "Is this by any chance a suffragette lecture in disguise?" "Certainly not. Who mentioned suffragettes? I'm talking of the old-fashioned women who stay at home, and look after their own affairs, and I'm sorry for them, and wonder they are not fifty times more stupid than they are, and I'm sorry I spoke. I said in my haste, `They can talk of nothing but their servants.' Poor darlings! What wonder? Shut in from morning till night with two aproned fiends, who at any moment may reduce you to starvation, or poison you as you eat. (I don't care if my pronouns _are_ mixed! I shall mix them if I like!) Suppose man had to live day and night mewed up with his clerk and office boy; suppose _you_ were followed wherever you went by grumbles and breakages, and a smell of onions, and daren't let go, in case you were left to clean the sink yourself! A woman said to me the other day, that after a lifelong struggle she could not for the life of her decide which was worse--a servant who thinks, or a servant who don't. Her housemaid _could_ think. She thought the laundry bill had been rather high the last few weeks, so she kept back a lot of table-linen what time a party of guests were expected. She was hurt about it when reproved, and said she could never do right. She couldn't... Martin! make up my mind for me.--Should I give Parsons notice or not?" Martin elevated his eyebrows, and nodded once or twice with an air of enlightenment. "Ah-ha! Now we come to it! I was waiting for the personal application. Parsons, eh! Let me hear the case. Yours and Parsons's. Then I can judge." Grizel rested both elbows on the table, and supported her chin in the hollow of her hands.