The servant that I had after my fine lady was really a good one; but she objected to clean boots and knives, declaring that she had lived as maid-of-all-work in the first of families--(I never knew such first of families--I had her character from a tobacconist),--where every morning a man used to come in and do them. Indeed, she positively refused to touch either; so, as I wasn’t going to give into her--even if she had been the treasure that my mother promised to find me when I first got married--I determined to let her see who was mistress, and paying her a month in advance, I told her to go back and show her airs in her first of families, for she shouldn’t in mine. Really, what with all this worry and bother, and what with my nursing at the time, I declare it was pulling me down so low, that my poor bones were all starting through my poor skin, and positively I hadn’t a bit of fat left upon my cheeks. If I drank one pint of porter throughout the day, I must have drunk near upon a dozen; and although the beer in the neighbourhood certainly was very good, still it seemed to be all thrown away upon me; and dear Edward very truly observed, that such a great big child as my Kitty was too much for me, and that either I must make up my mind to wean the poor little dear, (which I couldn’t bear the thoughts of,) or I must take more substantial food, and keep always having something strengthening, and a glass of port wine every two hours throughout the day; for he said, he didn’t wish me to go drinking so much porter; and that, as it was, there was nothing but one series of cries now at our door of “pots” and “beer,” from the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night. Really, he felt quite ashamed to look at our area rails when he got up, for there wasn’t a spike that hadn’t got a pewter-pot hanging to it, so that any one to see the sight would imagine that porter after all was the real blessing to mothers, and that Barclay and Perkins ought to be looked upon as the gigantic wet-nurses to the infants of the metropolis, while Truman and Hanbury might, at the same time, be regarded in the light of the extensive purveyors of milk to the blessed babes of London. I told him, for goodness’ sake, to hold his tongue, and talk about something that he understood, and that I was sure I didn’t take half as much stout as many ladies that I knew, for that ever since the little pet had been born, I had accustomed it to the bottle. “Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he replied; “teaching a little innocent creature like that to fly for consolation to the bottle already. For my part,” he continued, “I shouldn’t at all wonder if she could, even now, at her tender age, manage her six bottles without being under the cradle.” “Well, I’m sure!” I exclaimed. “I think you might find something better to joke upon, Mr. Sk--n--st--n, and not go turning your own flesh and blood into ridicule.”