`Besides the nursery staff we had a cook, a house-parlourmaid and a housemaid. I do not suppose that anyone today in my father's position would keep more than two maids, or indeed more than one. But in keeping three he was doing no more than most. In Arabella's house there also were three maids, and in very other house from number one upwards to the top of the hill. Forty-six houses-one hundred and thirty-eight maids in white caps and white aprons, print dresses m the morning and black dresses in the afternoon - one hundred and thirty­eight maids, sleeping in basement bed­rooms, eating in basement kitchens, carrying meals up basement stairs-up other stairs as well, for we had all our meals carried up to the nursery - carrying hot water to each bedroom four times a day, carrying coals for half a dozen scuttles, lighting and making up half a dozen fires, cleaning and blackleading half a dozen grates, sweeping carpets on their knees with dustpans and brushes, scrubbing floors, polishing furniture and "brasses" with polish they had to make themselves, lighting the gas in every room and passage when darkness fell, besides all the business of cooking and waiting at meals and washing up af­terwards - No, I do not think we were overstaffed.

The house had been built in 1885, and when my parents took possession of it as its first tenants it was regarded as a very latest expression of modernity and domestic enlightenment. It had, for one thing, a "housemaid's cup­board" half way up the second flight of stairs, a sensational improvement on those houses where no water at all was laid on above the basement. We had a bathroom, too, and there was a cloak­room with hot and cold water taps on the ground floor. Nothing could be more up to date.'