In the face of these facts, I cannot deny that Clementine's "character" was not exactly the sort most people expect when they engage a servant. But I would not turn adrift a mangy dog or a lost cat whom I had once taken in. And she did her work very well, with a thoroughness the English charwoman would have despised, never minding what that work was, so long as she had plenty to eat and could prepare by an elaborate toilet for every errand she ran. Her morals could do us small harm, and for a while I was foolish enough to hope ours might do her some good. I realize now that nothing could have improved Clementine; she was not made that way; but at the time she was too wholly unlike any woman I had ever come in contact with, for me to see that the difference lay in her having no morals to help. She was not immoral, but unmoral. Right and wrong were without meaning for her. Her standards, if she could be said to have any, were comfort and discomfort. Virtue and vice were the same to her, so long as she was not unpleasantly interfered with. This was the explanation of her past, as of her frankness in disclosing it, and she was too much occupied in avoiding present pain to bother about the future by cultivating economy, or ambition, or prudence. An animal would take more thought for the morrow than Clementine. Of all the people I have ever come across, she had the most reason to be weary-laden, but instead of "tears in her eyes," there was always a giggle on her lips. "_La colere, c'est la folie_," she assured me, and it was a folly she avoided with marked success. Perhaps she was wise, undoubtedly she was the happier for it.