After Susan left me, I had one or two maids; but I really can’t say what on earth had come to all the creatures, for none of them would suit me. However, as there was nothing particular about their goings on, and the annoyances they caused me were not of sufficient consequence to interest my readers, I shall merely say that, as I wasn’t going to have any more pretty maids in my house so long as those dreadful barracks remained in the neighbourhood, I took good care to choose the very ugliest that I could pitch upon. I declare to goodness if the woman wasn’t the very image of an ourang-outang in petticoats! Goodness gracious! I never saw such a head on a woman’s shoulders before in all my life. Lord-a’-mercy upon the woman, if she hadn’t nose enough for six! and it was of that peculiar shape which mother calls a bottle, and hairs all growing on the end of it, just like a large ripe red gooseberry. But I’m sorry to say that I had overshot my mark this time; for, upon my word, the woman was so shamefully ill-favoured, and so frightfully bad-looking, that after she came into the house, instead of growing accustomed to her face, as I expected I should, it only seemed to me to grow more and more ugly every day; and Edward vowed that he couldn’t bear to look upon her, and wouldn’t have such a buck-horse, as he called her, in his service; and, more than that, I declare my little ducks-o’-diamonds of a Kate used to scream itself nearly into fits directly the woman came near her. So I was obliged to get rid of her, though I must do the woman the justice to say that she answered my purpose very well, and did capitally for what I had engaged her--viz., to scare all the life-guardsmen away from my larder, which she did so effectually, that from the day after she entered my service, till the time she left, I never saw but one near the place, and he was a red-headed Irishman, and, I suppose, thought that, as the woman was so ugly, she must have a good bit of money in the savings bank; but even _he_ only came once. The next maid I had was too grand by half to please me, and ought to have been a duchess instead of a servant; as she told me, plump and plain, “that she couldn’t a’bear the taste of ’ashes, and warn’t a-going to have none of the scraps warmed up twice, and shoved off upon her.” So, of course, I soon let the stuck-up thing know that she wouldn’t suit me, and that I only hoped that the day might come when she would be glad to jump out of her skin to get a dishful of sweet and wholesome mutton, instead of standing there turning up her nose at it, as if she were a lady of fashion.