Down in the kitchen, she found the maid lying on her back on the rug, before the fire, in a state of complete insensibility, while our best linen sheets--which mamma had given out to her the day before, in order that they might be properly aired against our return--were hanging on the horse, burnt to perfect rags, so that they could not even be cut up into glass-cloths; and it was a mercy, she said, for which we ought to go down on our bended knees, that we did not come home and find our cottage orné a mass of black, smouldering, heart-rending ruins. The state into which this dreadful news threw both Edward and myself may be more easily imagined than described. Mamma’s lively picture of the good-for-nothing woman’s sufferings filled our hearts at the time with pity for the disreputable creature. We all thought it was a fit, and that the slut was afflicted with epilepsy; but alas! it was much worse than that; and she was, therefore, totally undeserving of all sympathy. Though we were then so wrapt up in the woman, (if I might be allowed the expression,) that we were unable to see through the minx; which fully convinces me of the truth of the popular saying--“that we are all blind mortals.” And a nice state we found the place in, indeed--everything topsy turvy throughout the establishment--indeed, any one, to have seen it, would have said that the whole house had been turned out of windows--not even so much as a spark of fire in the parlour grate--no cloth laid, nor things on the table for tea. Indeed, had we been dying of hunger ever so, there was nothing in the house for us but discomfort and misery--nor was there a thing to welcome us but some hot water--and even _that_ we should not have had, if my dear mamma herself had not prepared it for our reception. So that--to use a figure of speech--the place really seemed as if it did not belong to us, and that we were nothing better than intruders in our own house. I was even forced to stoop to light the fire myself; and my fair readers may well imagine my feelings when I tell them that there was scarcely even a bundle of wood in the establishment. As soon as it was fairly alight, I gave the bellows to poor Edward, who not being, as he said, “used to that sort of thing,” was consequently in a great passion; so I left him alone to blow up the fire, while I went to see that deceitful bit of goods, with the epilepsy, as I thought, up in the front attic--for my mother had put her to bed during her fit--(pretty fit, indeed!--but more of this hereafter.)