Next morning, I went down into the kitchen, at my usual hour, to see about our dinner. To make sure that Miss Betsy had not been treating herself and _that_ Wittals to a hot supper off my round of beef, as I knew, from the savoury smell there used to be down stairs very often of a night, she was in the habit of doing, though I had never been lucky enough to catch her in the fact, I just stepped into the larder to see that a slice hadn’t been taken off. At the first glance I caught of the round, I thought it had a very strange look about it, for it seemed to have lost the beautiful rich colour it had. So as our larder was rather dark, I told Betsy to carry it into the kitchen, and put it on the dresser. When I saw it fairly in the light, oh dear! oh dear! if it wasn’t as white as parchment! “What on earth _have_ you been doing to this meat, you good-for-nothing woman, you?” I exclaimed, drawing it close to me; “and what, in the name of all that’s filthy, are these black things?” I continued, just going to take hold of one of them, when I saw it move, and then, goodness gracious, the truth burst upon me! “Oh, you shameful, disobedient minx, if these are not the very leeches that I told you to throw into Mr. Simmonds’s garden.” And when I came to look well into the bleached round of beef, positively there were as many as four of the filthy, slimy vampires, who, having sucked the thing quite white, and till they were nearly as big as small black puddings, were now hanging down the sides, for all the world like the tails on my imitation ermine tippet. “Where have you put the other two?” I exclaimed, in a most tremendous passion; “tell me this minute, or I’ll have you up before a magistrate, for wilfully destroying my property, I will.” This put my lady in such a fright that she wasn’t long in pointing them out to me on the wash-hand-stand in Wittals’s room; and it was lucky I found them as soon as I did, for their noses were just over the rim of the bottle, and if I’d been a minute later, I should have had them crawling about the house, and fastening upon the legs of goodness knows who. I caught hold of the bottle, and poking the things back into the water with the end of the young urchin’s hair brush, I rushed with the whole concern down to the end of the garden, and threw the voracious little black monsters, bottle and all, right into the Simmondses’ garden--though, as it afterwards turned out, it would have been much better if I had left them where I had found them--for no sooner did that young monkey of a Wittals miss his darling leeches, and learn from Miss Betsy what had become of them, than he must needs go clambering over the wall, and, not content with bringing them back into the house again, must go putting them into one of my empty lozenge boxes, and leaving it on the dresser with the filthy things inside of it, while he went to get another bottle to keep them in, as I afterwards found out, to my cost.