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His Servant
by
In going out the husband said to the maid:
“You had better get up at seven in future and do my room. Your mistress shouldn’t have to do your work.”
In the evening Mr. Blackwood came home in high spirits but his wife was angry with him.
“Why am I not to do your room?” she asked.
“Because I object to your being my servant.”
“Why do you object?”
“The thought of it makes me unhappy.”
“But it doesn’t make you unhappy to think of me cooking your dinner and attending to your children?”
This remark set him thinking.
He pondered the question during the whole of his tram journey to Brooklyn.
When he came home in the evening, he had done a good deal of thinking.
“Now, listen to me, my love,” he began, “I’ve thought a lot about your position in the house and, of course, I am far from wishing that you should be my servant. I think the best thing to do is this: You must look upon me as your boarder and I’ll pay for myself. Then you’ll be mistress in the house, and I’ll pay you for my dinner.”
“What do you mean?” asked his wife, a little uneasy.
“What I say. Let’s pretend that you keep a boarding-house and that I’m your boarder. We’ll only pretend it, of course.”
“Very well! And what are you going to pay me?”
“Enough to prevent me from being under an obligation to you. It will improve my position, too, for then I shall not feel that I am kept out of kindness.”
“Out of kindness?”
“Yes; you give me a dinner which is only half-cooked, and then you go on repeating that you are my servant, that is to say, that you are working yourself to death for me.”
“What are you driving at?”
“Is three dollars a day enough for my board? Any boarding-house will take me for two.”
“Three dollars ought to be plenty.”
“Very well! Let’s say a thousand dollars per annum. Here’s the money in advance!”
He laid a bill on the table.
It was made out as follows:
Rent 500 dollars
Nurse's wages 100 "
Cook's wages 150 "
Wife's maintenance 500 "
Wife's pin money 500 "
Nurse's maintenance 300 "
Cook's maintenance 300 "
Children's maintenance 700 "
Children's clothes 500 "
Wood, light, assistance 500 "
4.500 dollars
“Divide this sum by two, since we share expenses equally, that leaves 2025 dollars. Deduct my thousand dollars and give me 1025 dollars. If you have got the money by you, all the better.”