Mrs. Coddle, moreover, made herself useful to her master as a kind of invisible mistress of the ceremonies. Major Oldschool’s long absence from England, and the alteration of many of the points of politeness, since he was a “blood upon town,” placed the officer in considerable doubt as to how he ought to behave in the presence of company. Mrs. Coddle had “nussed,” to use the lady’s own words, “in the fust of families,” for her connexion, as she said, being only among carriage people, she had helped to bring no less than four cornets into the world in her time, and, she was happy to say, as there weren’t one child among all her babbies (she had, in her own peculiar language, had as many as nine confinements every year since poor dear Mr. Coddle’s death), she was happy to say, as “there wasn’t one child of her nussing what could be called wulgar born.” Accordingly, Mrs. Coddle considered herself so well versed in all the social etiquette of the day, that she acted in the capacity of fashionable governess to the Major, paying particular attention to his “manners,” and taking care that he made what she termed “no holes in ’em afore wisitors.” If the Major had a friend to tea with him, she was continually bobbing in and out of the room, with some excuse or other, just to see how he was “behaving hisself;” and as she passed behind his chair, she would whisper in his ear, “Don’t drink your tea out of your sarcer,—you know I told you scores of times it aint perlite.” At dinner, while waiting upon him, she would say at one moment, as she saw him commit one after another the several little improprieties of the table, “There you are again, eating your fish with your knife—how often am I to tell you it’s wulgar?” at another, she would exclaim, “Now, Major, why will you keep scraping your plate round and round in that there manner, when if there’s one thing that is more ongenteeler than another, that’s it;” then as she saw him about to lift the glass to his lips, she would take hold of his arm, and beg of him to swallow his “victuals” first, saying, he had a dreadful habit of drinking with his mouth full, and that was the most wulgarest trick of all the tricks he had. * * * * * Now, while the scene previously described was going on down stairs in the kitchen, another single knock “came” to the door. It was one of the under-clerks from the railway station who had just “stepped on” to inform the gentleman from the country that his boxes had come safely to hand. The Official, however, had no time to deliver his message; for the Major, who occupied the parlours, and who had just returned from his morning’s walk, overhearing some one in the passage say that he had come about something that was missing, popped his white head out of the parlour door, and making sure that some clue had been obtained to his runaway niece, requested the young man to step that way.