Talking of ranges reminds me that there are days when she says it is impossible to keep the range clean. Those are the days when she boils everything at full gallop so that it slops over with a horrid frittering noise and the smell gets even into my hair-brushes. I suppose that there are cooks who have a sense of smell, but they probably die very young and leave only those who cook from memory. One question often puzzles me. Does a good chef ever go near the scullery? Can real art survive within fifty yards of that thing which feels like seaweed and looks like a tennis net? or that tangle of greasy grey wire that speeds the departing and welcomes the coming occupant of a saucepan? Can nightingales’ tongues be prepared at a zinc table where pink and grey rabbit-skins, potato peelings, white of egg, and the clammy skeletons of fish are gathered together in reckless confusion? See a cook’s cupboard and die! It is very like Naples. There are fifty small tins all exactly alike, except that some are sticky, some greasy, and some black with coal dust; their lids are bent into fantastic shapes which prevent them from being opened without a struggle. There are pepper-pots whose holes are stopped up with fat and rust; glass jars containing different sizes of corrugated white bullets; nameless brown powders at the bottom of blue paper bags, screwed up at the neck, and with a currant sticking to the bottom; copies of last year’s _Times_ stained with paraffin; a cashmere boot, much worn at the heel; fire-lighters smeared with glue and sawdust; a spoon with a piece of cold bacon in it, and one of your best plates from upstairs--chipped. I suppose Ruth thinks that because we are but dust she had better go on building us up. _CHAPTER III_: THE HOUSEMAID The worst thing about housemaids is their restlessness. Their passion for traveling about from one room to another becomes at last a sort of nervous disease. I have already described my discomfort in the constant traffic of Elizabeth Tique’s small house, and the excellent plans I made to ensure solitude and peace in my own. But does anyone suppose for a moment that one single-handed mistress can check the migratory instincts of a full-grown housemaid, any more than she could impede the perpetual silent passage of a tortoise from the artichoke bed to the hot-house and round by the rhododendrons? I worked hard at the problem for some years. When we are young and hopeful it is quite easy to imagine that we are altering the facts of Nature. We talk glibly about our schemes for reforming drunkards, of the likelihood of the British working man becoming interested in art, and so on. In the same way I saw no difficulty then in the idea of persuading a housemaid to finish one room at a time. I spoke very nicely about it at first. I said: “Clara, I wish that you would begin one room at a time and then finish it, instead of going about doing little bits of things in each. It makes you so ubiquitous.”