One morning, however, as Edward was going out, he met one on the door-step, and sent her into the parlour to me. She was a tall, strong, big-boned, clean-looking, tidy, and respectable ugly woman, and looked as if she wasn’t afraid of work: so with my usual quick-sightedness l saw at a glance that she was just the person to suit me. When I asked her what her name was, she answered, with a curtsey, and a peculiar twang that was far from agreeable: “Norah Connor, sure.” To which I replied: “I am afraid you’re Irish, and I’ve an objection to persons from that country”--(mother had told me never to take an Irish woman in the house on any account.) But the woman answered in a tone so meek, that one would have fancied butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth: “Irish, did ye say? Och! sure now, and isn’t it Cornwall I am?” And so, with my customary sagacity, I at once saw that I was mistaking the Cornwall brogue for the Irish one; for having been bred up in London, I could not of course be expected to be particularly acquainted with the dialects of other countries,--if, indeed, I except that of “_Le Belle France_.” After asking her the usual questions as to “tea and sugar,” and wages, and cooking, and character, and, in particular, sobriety--in all of which she seemed to be quite _comme il faut_ (as they say in Boulogne)--I arranged with her that I would go after her character directly her late mistress could see me. Next morning, when we came down, the parlour fire was not even laid, and all the supper-things were on the table just as we had left them over-night. For Mary had got up when I rang the up-stairs bell, at six o’clock, to a moment, and though she had come down and got the street-door key out of our room, she must have gone up-stairs immediately afterwards, and tumbled into bed again, for it was clear that she had never shown her face in the kitchen that day.