OUR HELP 155 



impunity year after year daily drudgery, 

 complicated as it usually is with the care and 

 responsibility of their children. 



I tried my ' competent American woman ' 

 exhaustively, and, so far as I was personally 

 concerned, exhaustingly. The type of this 

 variety of Impossible Person does not vary 

 much. At all events, it is not difficult to 

 present a composite picture of her or it. I 

 may add that until she appeared upon my 

 Far Western carpet my domestic trials had 

 been so few as to arouse the envy nay, 

 the greed of neighbours. But luck had 

 favoured me, and my home was then not in 

 the West. The Impossible Person was to 

 change all that ; the Impossible Person, or 

 the Portly One ; either title applies equally 

 well. And as for calling her names why, 

 she owes her victim that compensation, and 

 it is but a little one, after all. The self- 

 restraint demanded by a year or two of slow 

 torture was due only to one's self; for as 

 regards her it was distinctly misplaced. Un- 

 doubtedly there is a large class of women on 

 whom the restraints of the noblesse that 

 obliges are entirely wasted ; a good shaking 



