Had Gustavus been a reasonable man, he might have begun supplying, in a rational way, the deficiency of domestic lore which his Julia thus lamentably discovered; but, unfortunately, his pride of the perfectibility of his own knowledge of these occult mysteries was called in question at the very time that his anger was roused by a fault the most heinous of any beyond the pale of the decalogue. With a look of terrible scorn, in which, all the gristly muscles of his grim face were called into a grotesque, convulsive motion, he announced, in as much of a paucity of vocables, and as loud a sound as ever the stentorian Cycloborus, expressed his settled determination to take the sovereignty of the kitchen on his own shoulders; and no one could have heard the sound and seen his countenance without believing that it was just as sure as death or sin that he would do as he said he would do. At least, there can be no manner of doubt that Mrs Julia M’Iver believed him, and it was equally doubtless that she did not fear him. She smiled at the success of her scheme, and the smile itself would have done the business of confirmations, if there had been any need of such aid in the matter. So, accordingly, the apparition was soon afterwards exhibited, of the great bibbed Gustavus striding about in the kitchen, and performing _manibus suis_ all the operations of the culinary department of his domestic economy; and we would tell a big untruth, or be guilty of misprision itself, if we attempted to conceal the fact, that he washed and dressed his own linens as well as, if not a deuced deal better, than any washerwoman that ever danced in a trough in the village of Duddingstone.