like so much sop, and, positively, I’d have bet any one anything there wasn’t enough custard left in the whole dish to fill a sixpenny “Circassian Cream” pot--and that’s small enough, goodness knows! so that really and truly it looked so uninviting when I came to help it, that it was hardly fit to give to one’s parrot, or even to let the servants have, by way of a treat.)--But to return: well, when I told Mr. Edward--I repeat for the third time--(for plague take that dinner, I _cannot_ get it out of my head)--that I had been considering for a long time whether it would be prudent in us to think about having another of those impudent young monkeys of pages in our house, when, for the matter of a few rubbishing pounds extra a year, we could get a nice, steady, handsome, respectable-looking man-servant, whose livery, I was sure, wouldn’t come, in the long run, to one penny more, if so much as that disgraceful young scape-grace of a Wittals’s did--for there’d be no silver sugar-loaf buttons continually to find, and they, with those bothering boys in livery, cost a small fortune alone, I knew. Besides, I said--just to put Edward in a good temper--a man of _his_ naturally strong judgment must be well aware that a great big strapping boy, who hadn’t done growing, and kept running up so fast that he required to have at least two tucks let out of his trowsers every quarter, must eat more than a decent, well-behaved, abstemious young man who had got to his proper size, and who consequently wouldn’t be always getting a head taller per annum out of your mutton and beef. And moreover, I added, going to the sofa and kissing him, as I saw him smile, with what at the time I foolishly supposed to be good humour,--“It will, you know, my dear, look so highly genteel, and give one such a standing in the world, to have one’s door opened by a fine good-looking fellow, with powdered hair and a pair of handsome legs, and near upon six feet in his shoes.” But, oh dear bless me, no! Mr. Edward wouldn’t listen to such _stuff_, as he called it; and must needs go bursting into a contemptuous laugh, telling me to go along with me, for I was an old fool, and ought to have more sense in my head at my time of life, (_my_ time of life, indeed! Well, that is good! Isn’t it, gentle reader?)