She had a treacherous friend who was a hunch-backed lady. They both loved the same gentleman, but he couldn’t marry them because he had a wife already. The hunch-backed lady used to come in the evening and sit down in the kitchen and say how ill the wife was, and that she couldn’t last much longer; but she did. The hunch-backed lady said that as soon as she was dead the gentleman they loved would want to marry the cook, and that he really loved her much better than his wife. The cook believed it, and she said if he had only known his mind when they were young together all the bother would have been saved. The hunch-backed lady wore a woolly black cloak, and a big fur on her shoulders to hide the hunch, a black velvet bonnet with strings and sparkling jet ornaments, and an expensive gold watch-chain. She had a very heavy face with her chin right on her chest, and light blue eyes and a handsome curly fringe. She used to drink quantities of tea out of a saucer, very hot, but the cook said she really liked whisky much better when she could get it. Once she ceased coming and the cook went to look for her, and she found out that the wife had really been dead all the while, and the hunch-backed lady had got married to the gentleman they loved. He didn’t want to be married, but she made him. She was afraid that if the cook had known his wife was dead she would have made him first. There was a page-boy in this house too, but not an anarchist. He wore no buttons, and he had to stop down in the kitchen and help the cook because of her “poor leg.” She got it through going out to buy three pounds of fish at the fishmonger’s and slipping on a piece of orange-peel outside the door. It used to give way just at the most awkward moments, and she said she almost believed it knew and did it on purpose. If she had a saucepan in her hand, or a piece of toast, or a leg of mutton it was all the same--she had to put it down on the floor and clutch herself round the knee to pull her leg straight again. Everybody knew about it, and the first thing they said when they came into the kitchen was, “Good-morning, cook, and how’s your poor leg?” and then she told them about it. When she sat down the boy used to arrange a chair in front of her for her to rest it on.