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 her composure and her aspirates at the same time, 'it seems that she had wanted to burn herself on what they calls the funereal pyre when her husband died, but them officers in charge was too keen on the watch to let her do that, so she made use of my Uncle Ebby to get away and do it on the quiet; and she promising all the time to marry him and give him all her treasure. Oh, I've no faith in Begums after that, miss, and it isn't to be expected, neither.'

Ermyntrude's lips closed with the firm snap of disapproval that I knew so well.

Poor dear Ermyntrude has no sense of humour. I don't believe she has ever seen anything funny in life right straight away from the time that she was born. Ermyntrude takes herself seriously. Therefore, like all other people who take themselves seriously, she furnishes a constant fund of merriment to those more fortunate beings blessed with the joyous gift of an eye to the lighter side of things.

Her name straight away strikes one as a bit incongruous when one looks at my eminently respectable maid-like maid. Now, if her godfathers and godmothers in her baptism could only have had visions of what manner of woman she would be when she grew up, they couldn't possibly have called her Ermyntrude. I do think it is such a mistake to label people for life before they've had time to show what they are going to be like. You take a wretched puling infant, just like fifty thousand other wretched infants, and you go and fix it for life with some sort