Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/52

 a room as this, she’ll want to keep on her present maid, I don’t suppose she can even prepare a bath for herself or fasten her dress or brush her hair. . .” But it’s better for that kind of thing to sink in at the beginning. . . Wherever I took him, he seemed to be saying: “You can’t do this sort of thing without so many servants, so much a year.”. . Will told me that the first night at dinner. . . But I’m afraid Will’s naughty sometimes. . . He thanked me—Colonel Butler did—in a way that suggested I hadn’t shewn him only the house.

“But I’ve enjoyed it,” I said. “I’m only sorry you weren’t able to go out with the rest.” He told me he didn’t hunt, he’d never had any opportunity. There was quite a list of things he didn’t do, but he was very simple and straightforward about them. Don’t you dislike that aggressive spirit which compels people to tell you how many they slept in one room and the night-schools they attended and so forth and so on? It makes me quite hot. I believe that’s why they do it. . . There was nothing of that about Colonel Butler, though the army had made him a little borné. When I took him to see the stables, he shewed a certain sentimental interest in Phyllida’s horses; but his only comment was: “I wish we were