"Groundsel, ma'am, for the bird; I paid a boy for gathering some, you can't get people to do things for nothing." This was not the only expense the bird had occasioned--he was the alleged cause of a great additional consumption in many things: eggs for boiling hard, bread for crumbling into his tea, white sugar for sticking between the wires of his cage, &c. &c. &c.; while there was a charge for bird-seed every second day, half a pound each time. So much for the bird. The charge for soap had always been enormous, but this week it was twice as much as usual. Mrs. Dorothea remonstrated: "You told me," she said, "that the reason you had used so much soap hitherto, was, that there were so few glass towels, that you were obliged to wash them continually; I got a dozen new ones accordingly, and here is more soap than ever charged." "It stands to reason, ma'am, where there is more linen, it must take more soap to wash it," answered Jones, with the coolest effrontery possible; and having, of course, no change to return out of the sovereign, she retired to the kitchen, to pronounce her mistress the _most meanest_ lady she had ever met with--indeed no lady at all; to grudge people the mouthfuls of meat they had earned, and the poor bird its two or three seeds; but what was worse than all, she wouldn't have them to wash their hands, for fear of using a bit of soap. "Considering the difference a canary bird has made," thought Mrs. Dorothea, "it is a fortunate circumstance that I was not persuaded to add an errand-boy to my establishment, as Jones so much wished." Jones, by some sort of accident, happened to have a son of eight or nine years old, whom, of course, she wished to see provided for.