When Mrs. Quiggin came down to breakfast next morning, a change both in her appearance and in her manner caught the eye and ear of Jenny Crow. Her fringe was combed back from her forehead, and her speech, even in the first salutation, gave a delicate hint of the broad Manx accent. “Ho, ho! what’s this?” thought Jenny, and she had not long to wait for an answer. An English waiter, who affected the ways of a French one, was fussing around with needless inquiries--_would Madame have this; would Madame do that?_--and when this person had scraped himself out of the room Mrs. Quiggin drew a long breath and said, “I don’t think I care so very much for this sort of thing after all, Jenny.” “What sort of thing, Nelly?” “Waiters and servants, and hotels and things,” said Nelly. “Really!” said Jenny. “It’s wonderful how much happier you are when you can be your own servant, and boil your own kettle and mash your own tea, and lay your own cloth, and clear away and wash up afterward.” “Do you say so, Nelly?” “Deed I do, though, Jenny. There’s some life in the like of that--seeing to yourself and such like. And what are the pleasures of towns and streets and hotels and servants, and such botherations to those of a sweet old farm that is all your own somewhere? And, to think--to think, Jenny, getting up in the summer morning before the sun itself, when the light is that cool dead gray, and the last stars are dying off, and the first birds are calling to their mates that are still asleep, and then going round to the cowhouse in the clear, crisp, ringing air, and startling the rabbits and the hares that are hopping about in the haggard--O! it’s delightful!” “Really now!” said Jenny. “And then the men coming down stairs, half awake and yawning, in their shirt sleeves and their stocking feet, and pushing on their boots and clattering out to the stable, and shouting to the horses that are stamping in their stalls; and then you yoursef busy as Thop’s wife laying the cups and saucers, and sending the boys to the well for water, and filling the big crock to the brim, and hanging the kettle on the hook, and setting somebody to blow the fire while the gorse flames and crackles, and bustling here and bustling there, and stirring yoursef terr’ble, and getting breakfast over, and starting everybody away to his work in the fields--aw, there’s nothing like it in the world.” “And do _you_ think that, Nelly?” said Jenny. “Why, yes; why shouldn’t I?” said Nelly. “Well, well,” said Jenny. “‘There’s nowt so queer as folk,’ as they say in Manchester. “What do you mean, Jenny Crow?” “I fancy I see you,” said Jenny, “bowling off to Balla--what d’ye call it?--and doing all that _by yourself_.” “Oh!” said Nelly.