Mr Benjamin

Mr Benjamin was the owner of a marriage bureau company who were opening a Northern branch in Manchester and Emily Nugent applied to run it.

The two met in a cafe in town for the interview where Emily told him her qualifications were that she liked people and understood them. Mr Benjamin asked her what a marriage bureau was about she idealistically answered love and marriage and introducing lonely people to each other. The pipe-smoking Mr Benjamin cynically told her that love covered a gamut of things, from an intimate night in a hotel to giving a donkey a lump of sugar, and that marriage was a contract, sometimes of convenience and sometimes of conscience. For good measure, he answered her claim that wedlock meant having children and growing together by saying that both of those things could be done without getting married. He summed himself up by saying he was a professional match-maker - he filed people according to their ages, interests and occupations and brought them together, leaving passions to God and the devil. He asked her if she could imagine a duchess marrying a dustman and she honestly replied "yes - if they were in love". Mr Benjamin had heard enough and closed the interview, with Emily failing to secure the position.