standing by, looking very sulky) was a cow-like creature
of eleven stone, and I laughed. She at once sniffed and marched away.
Mr Bilger, junior, presently followed her into the kitchen. I went after
him and ordered him out. Mary was leaning against the dresser, biting
her nails and looking at me viciously.

Half an hour later, as I walked to the ferry, I saw Mr Bilger, junior,
sitting by the roadside, eating bread and meat (my property). He stood
up as I passed, and said politely that it looked like rain. I requested
him to make a visit to Sheol, and passed on.

In the afternoon my sister called upon me at the _Evening News_ office.
She wore that look of resigned martyrdom peculiar to women who have
something unpleasant to say.

'Mary has given me notice--of course.'

'Why "of course!"'

Kate rose with an air of outraged dignity. 'Servants don't like to be
bullied and sworn at--not white servants, anyway. You can't expect the
girl to stay. She's a very good girl, and I'm sure that that young
man Bilger was doing no harm. As it is, you have placed me in a most
unpleasant position; I had told him that he could let his younger
brothers and sisters come and weed the paddock, and--'

'Why not invite the whole Bilger family to come and live on the
premises?' I began, when Kate interrupted me by saying that if I was
going to be violent she would leave me. Then she sailed out with an
injured expression of countenance.

When I returned home to dinner at 7.30, Mary waited upon us in sullen
silence. After dinner I called her in, gave her a week's wages in lieu
of notice, and told her to get out of the house as a nuisance. Kate went
outside and wept.

* * * * *

From that day the Bilger family proved a curse to me. Old Bilger wrote
me a note expressing his sorrow that his son--quite innocently--had
given me offence; also he regretted to hear that my servant had left me.
Mrs Bilger, he added, was quite grieved, and would do her best to send
some 'likely girls' over. 'If none of them suited, Mrs Bilger would
be delighted to come and assist my sister in the mornings. She was an
excellent, worthy woman.' And he ventured, with all due respect, to
suggest to me that my sister looked very delicate. His poor lad Edward
was very sad at heart _over the turn matters had taken_. The younger
children, too, were sadly grieved--to be in a garden, even to toil,
would be a revelation to them.

That eve