This is the story of 'Enrietter's adventures in our chambers, and I think whoever reads it will not wonder that I fought shy afterwards of the English servant who was not well on the wrong side of forty and whose thirst could not be quenched with tea. The real wonder is that I had the courage to risk another maid of any kind. Women have been reproached with their love of gossiping about servants since time immemorial, and I do not know for how long before that. But when I remember 'Enrietter, I do not understand how we have the heart ever to gossip about anything else. What became of her, who can say? Sometimes, when I think of her pretty face and all that was good in her, I can only hope that the next orgy led to still worse things than a broken head, and that Death saved her from the London streets. _Trimmer_ [Illustration: "AND THE WONDER GROWS WITH THE NIGHT"] II TRIMMER Until I began my search for an elderly woman who never drank anything stronger than tea, I had supposed it was the old who could find nobody to give them work. But my trouble was to find somebody old enough to give mine to. The "superior domestics" at the Registry Offices were much too well trained to confess even to middle age, and probably I should be looking for my elderly woman to this day, had not chance led Trimmer one afternoon to an office which I had left without hope in the morning. As her years could supply no possible demand save mine, she was sent at once to our chambers. To tell the truth, as soon as I saw her, I began to doubt my own wisdom. I had never imagined anybody quite so respectable. In her neat but rusty black dress and cape, her hair parted and brought carefully down over her ears, her bonnet tied under her chin, her reticule hanging on her arm, she was the incarnation of British respectability; "the very type," the "old Master Rembrandt van Rijn, with three Baedeker stars," I could almost hear Mr. Henry James describing her; and all she wanted was to belong "beautifully" to me. But then she looked as old as she looked respectable,--so much older than I meant her to look,--old to the point of fragility. She admitted to fifty-five, and when mentally I added four or five years more, I am sure I was not over generous. Her face was filled with wrinkles, her skin was curiously delicate, and she had the pallor that comes from a steady diet of tea and bread and sometimes butter. The hands through the large, carefully mended black gloves showed twisted and stiff, and it was not easy to fancy them making our beds and our fires, cooking our dinners, dusting our rooms, opening our front door. We needed some one to take care of us, and it was plain that she was far more in need of some one to take care of her,--all the plainer because of her anxiety to prove her capacity for work. There was nothing she could not do, nothing she would not do if I were but to name it. "I can cut about, mum, you'll see. Oh, I'm bonny!" And the