FullReads

“I am glad to see, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “that the Women’s Domestic Guild of America has succeeded in solving the servant girl problem– none too soon, one might almost say.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Wilkins, as she took the cover off the bacon and gave an extra polish to the mustard-pot with her apron, “they are clever people over there; leastways, so I’ve always ‘eard.”

“This, their latest, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “I am inclined to regard as their greatest triumph. My hope is that the Women’s Domestic Guild of America, when it has finished with the United States and Canada, will, perhaps, see its way to establishing a branch in England. There are ladies of my acquaintance who would welcome, I feel sure, any really satisfactory solution of the problem.”

“Well, good luck to it, is all I say,” responded Mrs. Wilkins, “and if it makes all the gals contented with their places, and all the mistresses satisfied with what they’ve got and ‘appy in their minds, why, God bless it, say I.”

“The mistake hitherto,” I said, “from what I read, appears to have been that the right servant was not sent to the right place. What the Women’s Domestic Guild of America proposes to do is to find the right servant for the right place. You see the difference, don’t you, Mrs. Wilkins?”

“That’s the secret,” agreed Mrs. Wilkins. They don’t anticipate any difficulty in getting the right sort of gal, I take it?”

“I gather not, Mrs. Wilkins,” I replied.

Mrs. Wilkins is of a pessimistic turn of mind.

“I am not so sure about it,” she said; “the Almighty don’t seem to ‘ave made too many of that sort. Unless these American ladies that you speak of are going to start a factory of their own. I am afraid there is disappointment in store for them.”

“Don’t throw cold water on the idea before it is fairly started, Mrs. Wilkins,” I pleaded.

“Well, sir,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “I ‘ave been a gal myself in service; and in my time I’ve ‘ad a few mistresses of my own, and I’ve ‘eard a good deal about others. There are ladies and ladies, as you may know, sir, and some of them, if they aren’t exactly angels, are about as near to it as can be looked for in this climate, and they are not the ones that do most of the complaining. But, as for the average mistress–well it ain’t a gal she wants, it’s a plaster image, without any natural innards–a sort of thing as ain’t ‘uman, and ain’t to be found in ‘uman nature. And then she’d grumble at it, if it didn’t ‘appen to be able to be in two places at once.”

“You fear that the standard for that ‘right girl’ is likely to be set a trifle too high Mrs. Wilkins,” I suggested.

“That ‘right gal,’ according to the notions of some of ’em,” retorted Mrs. Wilkins, “‘er place ain’t down ‘ere among us mere mortals; ‘er place is up in ‘eaven with a ‘arp and a golden crown. There’s my niece, Emma, I don’t say she is a saint, but a better ‘earted, ‘arder working gal, at twenty pounds a year, you don’t expect to find, unless maybe you’re a natural born fool that can’t ‘elp yourself. She wanted a place. She ‘ad been ‘ome for nearly six months, nursing ‘er old father, as ‘ad been down all the winter with rheumatic fever; and ‘ard-put to it she was for a few clothes. You ‘ear ’em talk about gals as insists on an hour a day for practising the piano, and the right to invite their young man to spend the evening with them in the drawing-room. Perhaps it is meant to be funny; I ain’t come across that type of gal myself, outside the pictures in the comic papers; and I’ll never believe, till I see ‘er myself, that anybody else ‘as. They sent ‘er from the registry office to a lady at Clapton.