Mrs. Ruggles, I may say, is a lady of quite amazing capacities
combined strangely with the commonest feminine weaknesses. She has
acute business judgment at most times, yet would fly at me in a rage
if I were to say what I think of the nipper's appalling grossness.
Quite naturally I do not push my unquestioned mastery to this extreme.
There are other matters in which I amusedly let her have her way,
though she fondly reminds me almost daily of my brutal self-will.
On one point I have just been obliged to assert this. She came running
to me with a suggestion for economizing in the manufacture of the
relish. She had devised a cheaper formula. But I was firm.
"So long as the inventor's face is on that flask," I said, "its
contents shall not be debased a tuppence. My name and face will
guarantee its purity."
She gave in nicely, merely declaring that I needn't growl like one of
their bears with a painful foot.
At my carefully mild suggestion she has just brought the nipper in
from where he was cattying the young fowls, much to their detriment.
But she is now heaping compote upon a slice of thickly buttered bread
for him, glancing meanwhile at our evening newspaper.
"Ruggums always has his awful own way, doesn't ums?" she remarks to
the nipper.
Pages:
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447