Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 1.pdf/275

Rh remain what she really was—a servant-girl. I know that to give a mere servant-girl, or at least an English servant-girl, the refined feelings of a human being, to present her as speaking with anything but an intolerable confusion of aspirates, places me outside the pale of respectable writers. Association with servants, even in thought, is dangerous in these days. I can only plead (pleading vainly, I know) that Delia was a very exceptional servant-girl. Possibly, if one inquired, it might be found that her parentage was upper middle-class—that she was made of the finer upper middle-class clay. And (this perhaps may avail me better) I will promise that in some future work I will redress the balance, and the patient reader shall have the recognised article, enormous feet and hands, systematic aspiration of vowels and elimination of aspirates, no figure (only middle-class girls have figures—the thing is beyond a servant-girl's means), a fringe (by agreement), and a cheerful readiness to dispose of her self-respect for half-a-crown. That is the accepted English servant, the typical Englishwoman (when stripped of money and accomplishments) as she appears in the works of contemporary writers. But Delia somehow was different. I can only regret the circumstance—it was altogether beyond my control.

§ 41

the next morning the Angel went down through the village, and, climbing the fence, waded through the waist-high reeds that fringe the Sidder. 243