west a bad business � a bad business there was always something in west s stolid face that used to amuse me you should have heard him i don t think spring days she could help it she never loved another man � i really don t but i was going to tell you i once knew a servant a married man he in love with a young woman and they waited long years and when the wife died they married that was all very well long ago west but wives don t die nowadays so aunt mary talked and giving expression to both the pathos and the comedy of her story then feeling that she was at too great length she strove to from the particular incident which she had related and get back to the theme of the conversation i don t know what we shall do i don t know what we are coming to servants are getting too strong for us my last cook gave us no end of trouble the butler used to have to lock up in the and yet i had to give her a character of course it was very wrong of me to enable her to thrust herself upon another family but what was i to do i could not deprive her of the means of earning her living she ll give trouble wherever she goes there is no remedy there really is not i don t know what is to be done unless we ladies combine and refuse to give them characters here aunt mary s thoughts and words began to fail her for she felt she was not getting back to the point where she had entered on her various and without further and quite she said but i forget where i was what were we talking about h we were talking about dear sally and and the need they stand of counsel and help their conduct is to be deeply regretted but theirs is only youthful folly they have not done anything i am sure that � days quite so of course but at the same time a stop must be put to all this nonsense it cannot be allowed i have only to look round to take all in they are worrying their father into his grave his position is a very trying one he has no one whom he can depend on � no one i am alone since poor � aunt mary and aunt looked at each other and they wondered if the terrors of the carving knife were completely forgotten poor james said aunt mary her hands is obliged to go to london every morning from ten till i may say half past six i am never home before seven these girls are their own they go out when they like they order the carriage whenever they like and they invite here every one it pleases their fancy to invite without consulting their father i believe he doesn t even � i know none of the young men who come to my house all i know of them is that they come from the road don t be so silly james put up that handkerchief of course the is one of the great of the place those villa have brought into a host of people that a man living in a big place like the house cannot know � little people who have � not two hundred pounds invested no nor yet a hundred well i don t wish to offend them i ll say small spring days they are all devoured with envy and all they think of is what goes on at the house a lot of young every morning i see them at the station watching me over the tops of their newspapers you must understand poor james up in london toiling not knowing what is going on in his own home and pleasure going on morning noon and i may say night for when james returned home unexpectedly about ten o clock at night he found them � how many were there about a dozen the others had gone drinking his champagne � his very best the last few bottles of port were drunk the that the gardener has been forcing so carefully for months past were all eaten i returned home unexpectedly i had intended to spend the night in london � you know i went there to see about starting on the stock exchange he has drawn three thousand more out of the i hope he won t lose it well i met in pall and he said if i would return by the late train that he would spend the night here and we would go up to town together in the morning i suspected nothing i went into my dining room and there i found them all at supper had it not been for it would not have mattered he was indignant when he saw one of those with his arm round the ba k of grace s chair he says that such company is not fit for the lady that is going to be his wife and he now on fixing the day the and everything or of breaking ofi the match spring days then why don t you fix the day and the grace is not willing she is quite she says she does not know whether she wiu have him or not sally tries to set her against him she laughs at him calls him foolish and the way in which he talks of his things of course it is quite true that he thinks everything he has is better than anybody else s she says he is old and says that kissing him would be like rubbing your face in a the fact is said aunt mary sally ought to have been a man had she been a man it would have 