would all have gone in at one ear and come out at the other; and, as he very wittily added, the girl’s knowledge-box was lined with less reading than a hair trunk. The stupid things the girl would say and do, and the dreadful scrapes she would get me into, all through her horrible simplicity, were enough to make the blood of a gold fish boil. Positively, one was always obliged to be speaking by the card, as Hamlet says in the play, though what speaking by the card means I really can’t say, for I never knew anybody but the sapient pig Toby, who was accustomed to do so. If you wanted anything done, you had to tell it to her in a hundred different ways, or else she would be sure to make some dreadful blunder or other; for, as for the flowers of speech, bless you! she paid no more regard to flowers than a cat does! If a double knock came to the door early in the day, and I had my hair in papers, or was down in the kitchen, seeing about dear Edward’s dinner, or was in the bed-room, making up the dirty linen for the wash, or in the drawing-room, dusting the china, (and consequently not dressed to receive company) and I told her, “I wouldn’t see them, and that I was out,” down stairs she’d frisk, and say to whomever it might be, “Missus says she wont see you, and she’s out.” Now I put it to every respectable married woman (who of course has, over and over again, been obliged to tell hundreds of white fibs like this in her time,) whether it wasn’t enough to ruffle a quaker, to have your best friends--carriage-folks, may be--insulted and turned away from your door in such a dreadful way? Again, I recollect just as the evenings were getting chilly, I thought Edward would relish a round or two of nice hot toast--not cut too thick, and well buttered--indeed, I thought I could take a mouthful of it myself--and accordingly, having told Miss Emma to make some, she must needs, when she brought it up, go setting it down on the slop basin. So I said to her, “Bless me, Emma, what is that footman down stairs for, I should like to know?” “There’s no footman down stairs, I can assure you, mum,” answered the stupid thing, staring her eyes half out of her head with wonder. “I tell you there is,” I exclaimed, “under the dresser. At least, all I can say is, there _was_ this morning--though you know as well as I do, that it’s no business to be lying there, all among the pots and pans--especially when I had a hook put up over the fire-place on purpose to have the footman hung upon. Why don’t you go and bring the thing up directly?” I continued, as she stood lost in astonishment. “Perhaps you will tell me next that it’s walked out of the house!” “There’s been no footman in the house, mum, ever since I’ve been here,” she answered, sobbing, and wiping her eyes with her apron. “The only one I’ve seen, I’m sure, is Mr. Simmons’ John, and he was sowing potatoes in the garden next door.”