As for her references, it was in keeping with everything else that she should have made the getting them so easy. She sent me no farther than to another little private hotel in another little street leading from the Strand to the river, within ten minutes' walk. It was kept by two elderly maiden ladies who received me with the usual incivility of the British hotel-keeper, until they discovered that I had come not for lodging and food, which they would have looked upon as an insult, but merely for a servant's character. They unbent still further at 'Enrietter's name, and were roused to an actual show of interest. They praised her cooking, her coffee, her quickness, her talent for hard work. But--and then they hesitated and I was lost, for nothing embarrasses me more than the Englishwoman's embarrassed silence. They did manage to blurt out that 'Enrietter was not tidy, which I regretted. I am not tidy myself, neither is J., and I have always thought it important that at least one person in a household should have some sense of order. But then they also told me that 'Enrietter had frequently been called upon to cook eighteen or twenty breakfasts of a morning, and lunches and dinners in proportion, and it struck me there might not have been much time left for her to be tidy in. After this, there was a fresh access of embarrassment so prolonged that I could not in decency sit it out, though I would have liked to make sure that it was due to their own difficulty with speech, and not to unspeakable depravity in 'Enrietter. However, it saves trouble to believe the best, when to believe the worst is to add to one's anxieties, and as soon as I got home I wrote and engaged 'Enrietter and cheerfully left the rest to Fate.