“Ah,” said Mrs. Wilkins, as she took the cover off the bacon and gave an extra polish to the mustard-pot with her apron², “they are clever people over there; leastways, so I’ve always ’eard.”

 

“This, their latest, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “I am inclined to regard as their greatest triumph.  My hope is that the Women’s Domestic Guild of America, when it has finished with the United States and Canada, will, perhaps, see its way to establishing a branch in England.  There are ladies of my acquaintance who would welcome, I feel sure, any really satisfactory solution of the problem.”

 

“Well, good luck to it, is all I say,” responded Mrs. Wilkins, “and if it makes all the gals⁴ contented⁵ with their places, and all the mistresses satisfied with what they’ve got and ’appy in their minds, why, God bless it, say I.”

 

“The mistake hitherto,” I said, “from what I read, appears to have been that the right servant was not sent to the right place.  What the Women’s Domestic Guild of America proposes to do is to find the right servant for the right place.  You see the difference, don’t you, Mrs. Wilkins?”

 

“That’s the secret,” agreed Mrs. Wilkins.  “They don’t anticipate any difficulty in getting the right sort of gal³, I take it?”

 

“I gather not, Mrs. Wilkins,” I replied.

 

Mrs. Wilkins is of a pessimistic turn of mind.

 

“I am not so sure about it,” she said; “the Almighty⁶ don’t seem to ’ave made too many of that sort.  Unless these American ladies that you speak of are going to start a factory of their own.  I am afraid there is disappointment in store for them.”

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