"Ef you please, Doctor, I won't keep you a minute, but I thought I'd ask you myself ef it's your wish as Miss Polly should go and give orders that on Monday morning I'm to turn the linen-press out from top to bottom, and to do it first of all before the rooms is put straight. And if I'm to unpick the blue muslin curtains, and take them down from where they was hung by my late blessed mistress's orders, in the spare room, and to fit them into the primrose room over the porch--for she says there's a Miss Virginy and a Master Paul coming, and the primrose room with the blue curtains is for one of them, she says. And I want to know from you, please, Doctor, if Miss Polly is to mistress it over me? And to take away the keys of the linen-press from me, and to follow me round, and to upset all my work, what I never stood, nor would stand. I want to know if it's your wish, Doctor?" "The fact is, Alice," began the Doctor--he put his hand to his brow, and a dim look came over his eyes--"the fact is--ah, that is my patients' bell, I must ask you to go, Alice, and to--to moderate your feelings. I have been anxious to give Miss Polly a lesson in experience, and it is only for a week. You will oblige me very much, Alice, by helping me in this matter." The Doctor walked to the door as he spoke, and opened it courteously. "Come in, Johnson," he said, to a ruddy-faced farmer, who was accompanied by a shy boy with a swelled face. "Come in; glad to see you, my friend. Is Tommy's toothache better?" Alice said afterwards that she never felt smaller in her life than when Dr. Maybright opened the study door to show her out. "Ef I'd been a queen he couldn't have done it more elegant," she remarked. "Eh, but he's a blessed man, and one would put up with two Miss Pollys for the sake of serving him." The Doctor having conquered Alice, again forgot his second daughter's vagaries, but a much sterner and more formidable interview was in store for him; it was one thing to conquer Alice, who was impressionable, and had a soft heart, and another to encounter the stony visage and rather awful presence of Mrs. Power. "It's to give notice I've come, Dr. Maybright," she said, dropping a curtsey, and twisting a corner of her large white apron round with one formidable red hand. "It's to give notice. This day month, please, Doctor, and, though I says it as shouldn't, you won't get no one else to jelly your soups, nor feather your potatoes, nor puff your pastry, as Jane Power has done. But there's limits, Dr. Maybright; and I has come to give you notice, though out of no disrespect to you, sir." "Then why do you do it, Mrs. Power?" said the Doctor. "You are an honest and conscientious servant, I know that from your late mistress's testimony. You cook very good dinners too, and you make suitable puddings for the children, and pastry not too rich. Why do you want to leave? I don't like change; and, if it is a question of wages, perhaps I may be able to meet you."