"All the same," he said, "it is a long stride from Tom Jones to Frederic." With that he fell to thinking of the student in Dublin and the men of old days, and wondered what might have become of them all and if they had fared better or worse than himself. XVI MRS. FOLYAT DISSECTED _If you had married a conscientious Bishop and made_ him _live in a pig-stye--à la bonne heure!_ JOHN RUSKIN FROM being a governess with extremely small wages Annette became a servant with no wages at all. A few months after her return to her father's house, Ada, the cook-general, married (beneath her) and she was replaced by a gnomish child of sixteen who wore short dresses and had her hair done up at the back in a tight little bun. She talked an entirely unintelligible language and delighted the Folyat family on the day after her arrival by saying to Annette, who happened to be in the kitchen: "Eeh! Annie,"--never a "Miss" from a North-country girl--"Eeh! Annie, will ye whack t' pots on t' table while I wash me 'ead?" Annette obliged, and "whacking the pots on the table" became the family euphemism for getting a meal ready. Gertrude and Mary had gradually retired from active service--Mary with better excuse than Gertrude--and the whole administration of the household devolved on Annette. Nothing was said to her about it, no arrangement was made; it just happened, and nobody noticed that it had happened. From early morning when she prepared tea for her mother, to late at night when she boiled her chocolate, Annette was cooking, washing up, dusting, making the beds, &c., and her only excursions, except to church or the schools, were to the shops to buy the wherewithal to cook, wash-up, dust, &c. Nobody ever thanked her: for many weeks nobody remarked that she was doing so much, and then Serge found her dragging a heavy coal-scuttle up the stairs to his studio, relieved her of it and questioned her. After that, when he was at home, he did what he could to assist her in the heavy work. As for Mrs. Folyat, she was a very lily, in that she toiled not neither did she spin. When she thought of it, she resented the decline and fall of her kitchen from cook-housemaid and parlourmaid to the sixteen-year-old hobgoblin, but, resentment being rather an active state of mind, she avoided it by giving no thought to the matter.