I did think it over,--while I interviewed slovenly English "generals" and stray Italian children, dropped upon me from Heaven knows where, while I darned the family stockings, while I ate the charwoman's chops. I thought it over indeed, far more than I wanted to, until, in despair, I returned to the Soho _Bureau_ to complain that I was still without a servant of any kind. The first person I saw was Louise, disconsolate, on a chair in the corner. She sprang up when she recognized me. Had she not said _Madame_ was kind? she cried. _Madame_ had come for her. I had done nothing of the sort. But there she was, this charming creature from the South; at home was the charwoman, dingy and dreary as the November skies. To look back now is to wonder why I did not jump at the chance of having her. As it was, I did take her,--no references, powder, sham diamonds, and all. But I compromised. It was to be for a week. After that, we should see. An hour later she was in my kitchen. A wonderful week followed. From the start we could not resist her charm, though to be on such terms with one's servant as to know that she has charm, is no doubt the worst possible kind of bad form. Even William Penn, the fastidious, was her slave at first sight,--and it would have been rank ingratitude if he had not been, for, from the ordinary London tabby average people saw in him, he was at once transformed into the most superb, the most magnificent of cats! And we were all superb, we were all magnificent, down to the snuffy, tattered old Irish charwoman who came to make us untidy three times a week, and whom we had not the heart to turn out, because we knew that if we did, there could be no one else foolish enough to take her in again. And Louise, though her southern imagination did such great things for us, had not overrated herself. She might be always laughing at everything, as they always do laugh "down there,"--at the English she couldn't understand, at _Mize Boum_, the nearest she came to the charwoman's name, at the fog she must have hated, at the dirt left for her to clean. But she worked harder than any servant I have ever had, and to better purpose. She adored the cleanliness and the order, it seemed, and was appalled at the dirt and slovenliness of the English, as every Frenchwoman is when she comes to the land that has not ceased to brag of its cleanliness since its own astonished discovery of the morning tub. Before Louise, the London blacks disappeared as if by magic. Our wardrobes were overhauled and set to rights. The linen was mended and put in place. And she could cook! Such _risotto_!--she had been in Italy--Such _macaroni_! Such _bouillabaisse_! Throughout that wonderful week, our chambers smelt as strong of _ail_ as a Provencal kitchen.