When I made known my business and had paid my fee, one of the several proprietors who were wandering about the front room went into the back apartment and soon returned with a tall Irishwoman with a bony weather-beaten face and a large weather-beaten shawl. This woman was told to take a chair by my side. Down sat the huge creature and stared at me. I did not feel very easy under her scrutinizing gaze, but I bore it as best I could, and immediately began to ask her all the appropriate questions that I could think of. Some she answered satisfactorily, and some she didn't answer at all; but as soon as I made a pause, she began to put questions herself. “How many servants do you kape?” she asked. I answered that we intended to get along with one, and if she understood her business, I thought she would find her work very easy, and the place a good one. She turned sharp upon me and said: “Have ye stationary wash-tubs?” I hesitated. I knew our wash-tubs were not stationary, for I had helped to carry them about. But they might be screwed fast and made stationary if that was an important object. But, before making this answer, I thought of the great conveniences for washing presented by our residence, surrounded as it was, at high tide, by water. “Why, we live in a stationary wash-tub,” I said, smiling. The woman looked at me steadfastly for a minute, and then she rose to her feet. Then she called out, as if she were crying fish or strawberries: “Mrs. Blaine!” The female keeper of the intelligence office, and the male keeper, and a thin clerk, and all the women in the back room, and all the patrons in the front room, jumped up and gathered around us. Astonished and somewhat disconcerted, I rose to my feet and confronted the tall Irishwoman, and stood smiling in an uncertain sort of a way, as if it were all very funny; but I couldn't see the point. I think I must have impressed the people with the idea that I wished I hadn't come. “He says,” exclaimed the woman, as if some other huckster were crying fish on the other side of the street--“he says he lives in a wash-toob.” “He's crazy!” ejaculated Mrs. Blaine, with an air that indicated “policeman” as plainly as if she had put her thought into words. A low murmur ran through the crowd of women, while the thin clerk edged toward the door. I saw there was no time to lose. I stepped back a little from the tall savage, who was breathing like a hot-air engine in front of me, and made my explanations to the company. I told the tale of “Rudder Grange,” and showed them how it was like to a stationary wash-tub--at certain stages of the tide. I was listened to with great attention. When I had finished, the tall woman turned around and faced the assemblage. “An' he wants a cook to make soup! In a canal-boat!” said she, and off she marched into the back-room, followed closely by all the other women. “I don't think we have any one here who would suit you,” said Mrs. Blaine.