When I went into the parlour, it was in such a dreadful state that really it is impossible for me to give my readers any idea of the dirt and filth about it--unless, indeed, I were to say that it was as grubby as one of my father’s coal-barges. I saw that I had got a very pretty week’s work cut out for me, and how Norah would ever be able to get through with it all, I couldn’t say. As for my beautiful bright stove, it was as rusty, and as brown as a poor curate’s coat, and the hearth-rug was as black as the face of that impudent cymbal-player in the Life Guards. All I know is, that we had to take everything out of the place; and, as I expected Edward to knock at the door every minute, I told Norah to light a fire and lay the cloth for dinner in the drawing-room. When I went up stairs to put myself to rights, it took me full half an hour, and nearly a whole cake of Windsor soap, before even I could bear the look of myself; and all the time I kept inquiring in my own mind, what I had better do in the situation that I was; for positively what between that Norah Connor’s impudence and spite, and my husband’s always taking her side, I really didn’t know how to act; for I felt myself to be (as Edward calls it) on the horns of a dilemma, and was so dreadfully tossed about, that I couldn’t undertake to say whether I was on my head or my heels. So after weighing it well, I determined upon breaking the dreadful news to my husband as gently as I could, directly he set foot in the house, and before he could catch sight of the mess in the dining-room. Accordingly, as soon as I heard his knock I went and opened the door myself, and while he was hanging his hat up in the hall, I said to him--as kindly as I could, I’m sure--“Oh, Edward! Norah _has_ been going on so to-day, you can’t think.” The more one does, however, the more one may, and I declare there was no pleasing Mr. Sk--n--st--n that day anyhow; for instead of trying to console me in my distress, he only banged his hat on his head again, and saying, that “It was always servants, servants, servants! from morning till night, and he’d be hung if he’d stand it any longer,” he bounced out of the house again, slamming the door after him like a cannon, and went sulking off to some filthy tavern in the neighbourhood, and never thought fit to return till five-and-twenty minutes past midnight--when he came home with his hair smelling of tobacco-smoke fit to knock one down, and the bow of his stock twisted right round to the side of his neck, and his intellects so muddled, that, do what I would, I couldn’t get him to carry the night candlestick straight, so that he would keep dropping the tallow-grease all over the carpets, as he went up stairs to bed.