"No, mum, not if I knows it; thank you all the same. I likes the sound of the place, mum, and I ain't a-finding fault with the wages, nor the tea and sugar, nor the perquisites, but I'll never bemean myself, mum, to going to a new house agen. I've been cook in the respectablest of families, mum, for three-and-thirty years, and after my egsperience in new houses, I'll never go to one no more. "Now, of course I ain't a-saying but what old houses has their doorbacks, sech as crickets, as is allus a-going fuzz, and flying by night into the candle and into the sugar-basin; and then, agen, black beatles, as isn't pleasant to walk over if you come down in the dark, and then a-going pop to that degree that the mess on the floor nex morning is enough to worry a tylin' and mylin' woman out of her seven senses. "You see, mum, I don't dislike the looks of you; for you don't look mean, and as if you'd allus be a-pottering about in my kidgin, which is a thing I can't abear; for, as I says to Mary in my last place--Mary, you know, as married the green-grocer, and sells coals at the little shop a-corner of the mews,--`Mary,' I says, `a missus oughter be in her drorring-room--a-drorring, or a-receiving of wisitors, or a-making of herself agreeable at the winder, not a-poking and a-poll-prying about my kidgin, with her nose in the dresser-drors, a-smelling and a-peeping about. What is it to her, I should like to know, if there is a bottle in the corner of the cupboard next door to the cruets, and if it don't smell of winegar but of g--, you know? Why, if a missus was troubled with spazzums to the degree as I've suffered 'em, she'd go and live in a distillery and never be happy out.' The things as I've put up with in some places, mum, would give you the creeps, and make yer 'air stand on end. Me, you know, a cook as has lived in the best of families, to be told as the brandy-sauce had not got half the brandy in; and when the tipsy-cake come on the table, for the missus to come downstairs in a towering fury, and go on like Billinsgate. I'm sure she did for all her pretence about being a lady; and to say as she did with them brazen lips of her's, and all the time trembling with passion--