I am now in my forty-first year, and grown corpulent. It is now twenty-one years since I saw my unfortunate parent interred, and I walk about my domains Sir Ralphed to my heart's content--or, more properly speaking, discontent. Old Pigtop is a fixture, for he has now really become old. I cannot call him my friend, for I must venerate him to whom I give that title, and veneration, or even esteem, Pigtop was never born to inspire. My humble companion he is not, for no person in his deportment towards me can be less humble than he. He is as quarrelsome as a lady's lapdog, and seems never so happy as when he has effectually thwarted my intentions. Prince Hal said of the jolly wine-bibber, Jack, that "he could have better spared a better man!" Of Pigtop I am compelled to say more--"I could not spare him at all." He has become necessary to me. He was never very handsome; but now, in his sixty-second year, he is a perfect fright; so, at least, everybody tells me, for I don't see it myself. His duties about my person seem to be continually healthily irritant; the most important one of which is, to keep me a bachelor, and scare away all womankind from Rathelin Hall. He controls my servants, and helps me to spoil them. Such a set of heavy, bloated, good-for-nothing, impudent, and happy dogs, never before fed upon a baronet's substance, contradicted him to his very face, and fought for him behind his back. The females in my establishment bear but a most niggardly proportion to the males--in the ratio of Falstaff, one pennyworth of bread to his many gallons of sack: and these few are the most hideous, pox-marked, blear-eyed damsels that the country could produce--all Pigtop's doing. Never shall I forget the consternation, the blank dismay of his countenance, when, one fine, sunshiny morning, I announced to him my intention of installing in the mansion some respectable middle-aged gentlewoman as my housekeeper. It was some time before he could find his speech. "Blood and thunder! bombs and fury! what have I done, that you should turn me out of your house in my grey hairs--now I'm dismantled, as it were, and laid up in ordinary?" "Turn you out, Piggy! what could put that in your foolish noddle?" "If madam comes in, I cut my cable, and pay off Rathelin Hall right abaft--even if I die in a ditch, and am buried by the parish. Take a housekeeper!--oh Lord! oh Lord! oh Lord! I would just as soon see you married, or in your coffin." "But some such a person is absolutely necessary in an establishment of this extent; so a housekeeper I'll have, of some sort." "Why the devil need it be a woman, then? why won't a man do--why won't I do?" "You?" "Yes, me--Andrew Pigtop. I ask the appointment--do, there's a good Sir Ralph, make it out directly. Clap your signature to it, and let it run as much like a commission as possible. I ask it as a favour. You know the great sacrifices that I have made for you."