"Something has happened in this 'ere house," said Margaret in the confidential atmosphere of the kitchen. "Missus have had no lunch to-day, not enough to keep a fly alive. Just look at this plate, and that little dish you tossed up is one of her favorites. Why, she hasn't even picked the mushrooms out of it." "Lor'! she must be bad," said the faithful cook. "Poor missus! I wonder if it's true what they be saying, that master's gone away for good and all. Six days he's been away and only one post-card has he sent home. Why, generally he writes home every day and sometimes twice. Ah, men! they're all alike, not a pin to choose between 'em. Now the last place that I was in, I only stayed my month, for the lady she had fifteen servants in one year and she only kept two, so you can guess what sort of a place I had lighted on. Master, he carried on something shameful, not that I blame him, for a man what comes home and can't get his meals regular and never knows whether missus will be in or out and everything else in the same way--well, you can't expect a house to be run what you can call comfortable, at least it never is, and this was a poor, feckless thing that didn't understand how to order a dinner for a gentleman, and didn't understand how to let the cook make a suggestion. All the same, the way that man carried on was fair disgraceful. Now, master here has kept his doings dark, and indeed if it hadn't been for what you overheard Miss Maudie that was tell Miss Julia, I don't know that we should have been any wiser than we were before. But there, men are all alike. Look at Bill Jackson, he kept company with Annie Hodgkinson for five years and a half, and then he up and fair jilts her for the sake of a little bit of a girl that doesn't know one end of a ham from the other. Of course he's miserable and he doesn't deserve to be anything else." "For the matter of that," retorted the fair Margaret, "neither does she; she knew well enough what she was doing when she set her cap at Bill Jackson. Don't tell me that those innocent eyes don't see more than they pretend to, nasty little hussy! I'm sure, whatever happens in this house, missus has my profoundest sympathy, and that's more than I'd say for any missus, and as for master, he's like all the rest of them--fair disgraceful, I call it." "Me too," said the cook, "me too."