"An' when I dies they give me fifteen pounds on the nail an' no
waitin'," said Elizabeth triumphantly, as she explained her latest
insurance scheme.
"On what nail?" I asked distrustfully. I could not understand why
Elizabeth felt justified in paying sixpence per week for a benefit
fraught with so little ultimate joy to herself. But she is the sort of
girl that can never resist the back-door tout. She is constantly being
persuaded to buy something for which she pays a small weekly sum.
This is entered in a book, and the only conditions are that she must
continue paying that sum for the rest of her natural lifetime.
On these lines Elizabeth has "put in" for many articles in the course
of her chequered career. She has had fleeting possession of a steel
engraving of QUEEN VICTORIA, a watch that never would go--until her
payments ceased--a sewing-machine (treadle), a set of vases and a
marble timepiece. The timepiece, she explained, was destined for "the
bottom drawer," which she had begun to furnish from the moment a young
man first inquired which was her night out.
As all these things were taken from her directly her payments fell
off, I thought I had better give her the benefit of my ripe judgment.
"I shouldn't buy anything on the instalment plan, if I were you," I
advised. "Some people seem to be made for the system, but you are not
one of them."
"But I 'aven't told you wot I'm buyin' now," she said excitedly,
putting a plate on the rack as she spoke. I ought to say she meant to
put it on the rack; that it fell two inches short wasn't Elizabeth's
fault.
"It was cracked afore," she murmured mechanically as she gathered
up the fragments. "Yes, I pays a shillin' a week an' I gets a
grammerfone."
"A what?" I gasped.
"A grammerfone--to play, you know."
"Where will it play?" I asked feebly.
"'Ere," she said, waving a comprehensive hand; "an' it won't 'arf
liven the place up. My friend 'as 'ers goin' all day long."
I stifled a moan of horror, for I am one of the elect few who loathe
gramophones, even at their best and costliest.
"Elizabeth," I cried, tears of anguish rising to my eyes, "let me
implore you not to get one of those horr--I mean, not to be imposed on
again."
"I've got it," she announced. "I meantersay I've paid the first
shillin' an' it's comin' to-morrow. I 'ave it a month on trial."
The month certainly was a trial--for me. Ours is not one of those
old-fashioned residences with thick walls that muffle sound, and where
servants can be consigned to dwell in the bowels of the earth. Every
noise which arises in the kitchen, from Elizabeth's badinage with
the butcher's boy to the raucous grind of the knife-machine, echoes
through the house _viâ_ the study where I work.
Thus, although Elizabeth kept the kitchen-door shut, I found myself
compelled for one-half of the day to consider an insistent demand as
to the ultimate destination of flies in the winter-time. The rest of
the day the gramophone gave us _K-K-K-Katie_. (Elizabeth had only two
records to begin with.)
I became unnerved. My work suffered. It began to trickle back to me
accompanied by the regrets of editors; and to writers the regrets of
editors are the most poignant in the world.
The situation was saved by the most up-to-date tout of the whole
back-door tribe. He persuaded Elizabeth to go in for Spiritualism.
Do not misunderstand me. You can be a Spiritualist and also keep a
gramophone, but, if you are Elizabeth, you cannot keep the two running
at the same time if you must pay a shilling per week for each. When
she sought my opinion I strongly advised the séances, which I
said were cheap at the price; indeed I thought they were when the
gramophone departed.
It was now Elizabeth's turn to become unnerved. She has a mind that
is peculiarly open to impressions, and communion with the spirits
unbalanced her. She justified her expenditure of a shilling weekly by
placing the utmost faith in them.
"I 'ad a message from them there spirits larst night," she informed me
one day, "an' they tell me I must change my 'abitation."
"What do you mean?" I asked, startled.
"I put a message through, arskin' them when I should get a settled
young man, an' they told me that the fates are agen me in my present
dwellin', so if you'll please take my notice from--"
I will not go through the sickening formula. Every housewife must have
heard it several times at least in the past year or so. I accepted
Elizabeth's resignation and began to concentrate on newspaper
announcements. But I took an utter dislike to the spirits and listened
with cold aloofness when Elizabeth began, "I was talkin' to the spirit
of my young man larst night--"
"I didn't know you had the spirit of any young man," I interrupted.
"Yes, I 'ave. I mean Ned Akroyd, 'oo was drownded."
Now I have never believed in the alleged drowning of the said Ned.
The news--conveyed to Elizabeth by his mate--that he had fallen from
a ferry-boat near Eel Pie Island seemed unconvincing, especially as it
happened shortly after Elizabeth had lent him fifteen-and-six.
"I 'ad quite a long talk with 'im," she went on. "Next time I'm goin'
to arst 'im about the fifteen-and-six 'e borrowed, an' see if I can't
get it back some'ow."
How the spirit would have considered this proposition is still
uncertain, for Elizabeth never returned to the séances. She came to me
one day in a state of violent agitation. "I see Ned Akroyd when I was
out larst night," she began, "an' would you believe it, 'e's no more
dead than I am, the wretch!"
"Well, aren't you glad?" I inquired.
"Glad, an' 'im with another girl an' pretendin' all the time not to
see me! Men are 'ounds, that's what they are. An' I'll go to no more
seeonces. They're a swindle."
"They were wrong about telling you to change your habitation too,
weren't they?" I suggested insinuatingly.
"Course they were." Suddenly her face brightened. "I'll be able to
'ave the grammerfone back now," she said.
* * * * *
At the moment I am writing to the sounds of _K-K-K-Katie_, which, I
fear, is giving me rather a syncopated style. But if the Editor is
k-k-k-kind he will not banish me from _P-P-P-Punch_ for this reason,
as anyone can see my intentions are g-g-g-good.
Stay! _K-K-K-Katie_ has ceased and I can think lucidly. An inspiration
has come to me. Has not Elizabeth in her time wrought havoc among my
crockery? The hour is ripe for me to retaliate.
To morrow at dawn I shall examine the gramophone records and--_they
will come in two in my hands_.
It will be the first time I have broken any record.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Wife_ (_to husband being bundled in as train moves
off_). "DID YE GET RETURN TICKETS?"
_Husband_. "NOA (_puff_)--DIDN'T 'AVE TIME."]
* * * * *
"MISUSE OF RESEARCH GRANTS.