Charles came strolling into the house with a string of fresh caught fish to fry and was stunned at what he saw.

“Hello!” Ada called as she walked down the stairs. “I want to talk to you!”

Charles grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the office and out of sight. “Ada!” he hissed. “There’s a guy cooking in our kitchen!”

“I know, silly,” Ada said. “That’s Kirby Hawkins. He’s our butler.”

Charles blinked. “We have a butler?”

Ada beamed. “We do now! I called up the service and hired him yesterday.”

“Why on earth did you think we needed a butler?”

Ada shrugged. “They wear monocles, and monocles are really neat.”

So the Samples had a butler. It took some getting used to, but after a while even Charles had to admit that there were some advantages to having live-in help. Kirby eagerly learned recipes for Charles’s fish, and the house was always filled with the delicious scents of fresh gourmet food. The family had never eaten so well.

Fabian was a little put out, though. He loved to cook, and now there was no reason to.

After a while, though, the leftovers were piling up in the fridge. Kirby began stacking plates on top of plates. Food began to go bad.

“I think we really have enough to eat,” Charles said pointedly when he found Kirby in the kitchen making yet another delicious batch of poached salmon. “There’s water pooling up on the back deck. Would you, um, mind cleaning it up?”

“I’ll do that immediately, sir!” Kirby said, and he meant it. It dropped the platter of salmon on the counter and dashed out the door.

And he scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed.

The back deck was certainly a lot to clean, and it seemed like no sooner had Kirby made it spotless before the garden sprinklers came on and showered more water on it to mop up.

Kirby took to roaming around the back yard at all hours, muttering about cleaning supplies.

He stopped bothering to put on his suit and monocle, which disappointed Ada to no end.

One morning, Charles woke up to Veronica shaking him. Her face managed to look both delighted and terrified all at once.

“I couldn’t wait to tell you,” she said breathlessly. “I took the test, and it’s positive. We’re going to be parents!”

“Oh, wow,” Charles gasped. “I don’t know what to say. I think I need a drink. Would you like, um, a glass of water.”

Then he froze. “What is HE doing here?”

“Who?” Veronica said.

Charles stared across their bed at Kirby Hawkins.

He looked like he’d been sleeping in the back yard again, and Charles could smell him from across the room.

“What the heck were you doing?” Charles demanded. “Watching us sleep?”

Kirby gave him a twisted smile. “There’s water on the back deck again,” he said. “I have to mop it up.”

“You are one heck of a creepy bastard,” Charles said. “You’re fired! Get off my property or I’ll get you off!”

And that was the end of the Samples’ experiment with live-in help.

———-

Ada got a high-value wish to hire a butler, so I gave one a try. OK, I don’t see the point. He cooked about 4x the food the household actually needed and did very little cleaning, which we really did need. And there’s an interaction to ask the butler to cook, which I never needed to prompt him to do, but not one to ask him to clean!

Once he did do some cleaning, it’s like he never even tried to go back to his bedroom to sleep.

I wish I’d taken more pictures of him cooking, so there would be more photo continuity for the first part. But I had no idea how messed up he was going to get. I did include the closeup, though, because I thought his eyes were awesome.

At least ours didn’t set the house on fire like DragonWife’s. Charles tried to fire him, and it failed, just like it did for her. I had to use the Dismiss option, which worked.