Another day I asked him why his lettuces were a penny more than anyone else’s and whether he charged for the caterpillars sandwiched in them. He said that it was quite a mistake my having had the one with the caterpillar. He had noticed it at once when they were brought in, and had particularly told the young lady to destroy the lot. He was very glad I had mentioned it, and he could give me the best lettuces in the market for a penny halfpenny if I did not object to their having no hearts. He always sent those with hearts unless he was specially told otherwise by ladies who were obliged to consider trifles. _CHAPTER V_: THE DINNER PARTY For some weeks after I began housekeeping I had a feeling that all was not right with Ruth. She would not talk about food when I went to the kitchen, but somehow or other she always managed to bring in some remark about the people in the houses near us. “Underdone, m’m? Yes, m’m, I quite understand,” she said one day in answer to a criticism of mine. “Speaking of which, m’m, do you happen to be acquainted with Raws, in Windermere Place?” “Do you mean Colonel and Mrs. Raw?” I asked. “Yes, m’m; the young person who lives with them as cook is sister to my young man, and I just happened to mention who you were, m’m, and how I was living with you. She was very pleased to think I was so well off, and asked if we were very busy just now.” She made two or three more references to the great and good on whose cast-off legs of mutton we lived so happily (they had the loins and the shoulders, and we had the necks and legs, and, I regret to say, the tripe). At last she became more explicit. “Hardly seems worth while making these fancy dishes just for you and master, does it, m’m?” she said despondingly. “It would be different if you were having company and we wanted to show what we _could_ do.” It dawned on me then that Ruth was craving for morbid excitement. She longed to be at her wits’ end--that land of the leal where every true domestic servant loves to wallow and bemoan her lot. It was not long before she had her heart’s desire. People began to call, and when they began there was no stopping them. They came in barouches and in motors, on foot and in four-wheeled flys, from which the chaste kid boots of the elderly and the Parisian shoes of the rejuvenated descended in rich profusion. Clara found it more and more difficult to be dressed in time; in fact, when Mrs. Ajax and Mrs. Beehive took me first on their rounds and arrived at a quarter to three, it was Ruth, smutty and indignant, who opened the door. I spoke severely to Clara afterwards, and found that it was her migratory instinct which had betrayed her again. She had been upstairs to get dressed, and had wandered off to the washhouse in the middle of her toilet to fetch a clean apron. “Which reminds me, Clara,” I said. “Why does it take you so long to get tea when people call? You were three-quarters of an hour yesterday after I rang.”