"For one thing, I can't think how to raise a little money for the Parish Nurse Fund this year: we always have an entertainment of some kind every three or four years, you know, to eke out the subscriptions which aren't enough by themselves, and I really don't like the way this new cook fricassees: her gravy is so much too watery. Yet in other things--especially frying--she suits me so well; and changing servants, especially cooks, is always so very worrying. I can't think what induced Mrs. Wilkinson to get married." Mrs. Wilkinson was our ex-cook-housekeeper, who had so far forgotten herself--and Annabel--as to enter the holy estate of matrimony shortly after I myself took that momentous plunge. "I expect the same as induces most people," said Arthur: "she wanted to." "Well, it was very inconsiderate and selfish after all my kindness and consideration for her," said Annabel severely; "only two years ago I kept the situation open for two months while she had something the matter with her leg--I forget what it was, but I think it began with an 'E'--or was it an 'I'?--and I put up with the kitchenmaid and scullerymaid and outside help for all that time, giving Mrs. Wilkinson her full wages. And after that, I think it was too bad of her to throw me over in this way." "And for the sake of a mere man," I added. "No worse for a mere man than for a mere woman; the wrong thing was throwing me over at all, after all my kindness to her, and waiting for her for two months. Of course, if I'd known she was going to be married, I should have let her leg take her away permanently. But I can't imagine what put such an idea into her head." "Probably the man she married," said Fay; "men have a way of putting such ideas into our heads at times." "And at her age, too," continued the aggrieved one; "she owns to forty-five, and if people own to forty-five they'll own to anything. And as to the new cook's gravies, they really are not what we have been accustomed to at the Manor; so thin and tasteless; and I very much doubt if she is strict enough with Cutler about bringing in sufficient vegetables. Cutler requires a firm hand." "And he gets it, Miss Kingsnorth," cried Frank: "so firm that I've seen him stagger under it at times." Fay giggled. In fact, during the whole conversation she and Frank had kept catching each other's eye, and indulging in suppressed mirth. "I don't know if you have noticed it, Mr. Blathwayte," Annabel went on, "but gardeners are so dreadfully obstinate about bringing in sufficient vegetables. Cutler is really terrible about the peas. He seems to think they are planted to be looked at instead of eaten. And that is where Mrs. Wilkinson was so satisfactory: she mastered him completely, and made him bring in whatever vegetables she required." "That augurs well for her chances of conjugal felicity, and less well for those of her husband," I remarked.