If Mrs Jones be not as entirely fictitious as Mrs Harris, and would enclose us a few cards, we think we could undertake that her lodgings (with a countess and a pet village, too, close by) should not be untenanted for a week in summertime. We feel sure, however, that the good lady is _not_ a creature of mere imagination: when we read the description of her, we recall her as an old acquaintance, though we cannot remember her address:— “As for this good woman’s personal appearance, she had nothing attractive about her except her scrupulous cleanliness. Her age belonged to that mysterious epoch comprised between forty and sixty. She had an intelligent countenance; but what was most marked about her was a slightly military air, and a black silk bonnet which, planted on the top of her head, tilted forward over her face, and usually concealed half of it. The two strings were carefully pinned back over the brim, and the ends fluttered on each side the bonnet, like the plume of a _chasseur de Vincennes_. That bonnet, she never left it off for a moment; and my indiscreet imagination went so far as to speculate what could possibly become of it at night.... Though I had begged her to consider herself absolute mistress in all domestic matters—and though, moreover, I should have found considerable difficulty in ordering my own dinner—she never failed to come in every morning at breakfast-time ‘for orders,’ as she called it. It was a little ruse of hers to secure a moment for the active exercise of her somewhat gossiping tongue. I was enabled to endure the torrent of words of which good Mrs Jones disburdened herself on such occasions the more philosophically, inasmuch as she was nowise exacting in the matter of an answer, and now and then gave me some interesting bits of information.” The contrast which follows is drawn from a shrewd observation of national characteristics on both sides of the Channel:— “This respectable dame possessed in a high degree the good qualities and the defects of her class of Englishwomen. In France, the manners of women of her order are full of expansion and sympathy; and a small farmer’s wife, however ignorant she may be, will always find means to interest you in her affairs, and to enter into yours. In England, on the contrary, with all her gossiping upon trifling subjects, she will maintain the strictest reserve, so far as you are concerned, upon matters of any importance. She serves you much better than a Frenchwoman would, because she looks upon you in the light of a master—a guest whose rank and character she makes the most of, because that rank and character raise her in her own estimation; but it is only in some very exceptional case that she will talk to you about anything which touches her personally, or that she will venture to confess that she is thinking about your concerns—that would be, in her eyes, a breach of proper respect.