He said that the way fires were usually laid in this country was contrary to all the laws of nature, and he showed her how the thing was done in Crim Tartary, or some such place, where the science of laying fires is alone properly understood.

He proved to her that an immense saving in time and labour, to say nothing of coals, could be effected by the adoption of the Crim Tartary system; and he taught it to her then and there, and she went straight downstairs and explained it to the girl.
Amenda, our then "general," was an extremely stolid young person, and, in some respects, a model servant.

She never argued.

She never seemed to have any notions of her own whatever.

She accepted our ideas without comment, and carried them out with such pedantic precision and such evident absence of all feeling of responsibility concerning the result as to surround our home legislation with quite a military atmosphere.
On the present occasion she stood quietly by while the MacShaughnassy method of fire-laying was expounded to her.