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Natalie because of her constant nagging (nothing is ever gained by nagging Italian servants), - is there some way of making moths eat up one's enemy's clothes while respecting others hanging next to them? Natalie's fur coat is now being brushed in the garden and bits of fur are flying all about over the box-wood. I am sorry, for the matching of fur is impossible nowadays. Natalie's hostility to maids forms part of our daily life here. Nag she must and all the time; I let off steam too once in a while and much more violently than Natalie, but it lasts only a moment and afterwards I am not particularly pleased with myself. Maids in Florence are horrid and very hard to find; perhaps the best are doing war-work. I ask myself with trepidation "What on earth will happen to the rest of Natalie's winter clothes when the present maid shall have been sent away?" 

We have engaged a maid-of-all-work who is a displeasing mystery. I engaged her because she was not Italian, and following a series of witless Italian maids I had hoped to find one who possessed even slightly the efficiency of some other race. This new maid kept finding excuses for not showing us her papers but at least I could have judged from appearances. Between hunched shoulders a square lugubrious face with squinting eyes juts forward in close proximity to your own, hoping perhaps to catch if not the meaning of what you say, at least the full brunt of your disapproval. Orders are taken as if they were kicks and blows, and to ask help in the finding of some mislaid article