can't work hard enough for her. I must go,
if you please, sir. Whatever do you think
she done this morning? She up, and druv
the creases at me," With these words (which
I find mean in genteel English, that Mrs.
Glutch has enforced her last orders to the
servant by throwing a bunch of water-cresses
at her head), Number One curtseys and
says "Good-bye!" and goes out patiently
once again into the hard world. I follow
her a little while, in imagination, with
no very cheering effect on my spirits- for
what do I see awaiting her at each stage
of her career? Alas, for Number One, it
is always a figure in the likeness of Mrs.
Glutch.

Number Two fairly baffles me. I see her
grin perpetually at me, and imagine, at first,
that I am regarded by her in the light of a
humorous impostor, who shams illmess as a
new way of amusing himself. But I soon
discover that she grins at everything—at the
fire that she lights, at the cloth she lays for
dinner, at the medicine-bottles she brings
upstairs, at the furibund visage of Mrs. Glutch,
ready to drive whole baskets full of creases
at her head every morning. Looking at her
with the eye of an artist, I am obliged to
admit that Number Two is, as the painters
say, out of drawing. The longest things about
her are her arms; the thickest thing about
her is her waist. It is impossible, with the
best intentions, to believe that she has any
legs, and it is not easy to find out the
substitute which, in the absence of a neck, is
used to keep her big head from rolling off
her round shoulders. I try to make her talk,
but only succeed in encouraging her to grin
at me. Have ceaseless foul words, and ceaseless
dirty work clouded over all the little
light that has ever been let in on her mind?
I suspect that it is so, but I have no time to
acquire any positive information on the subject.
At the end of Number Two's first week
of service Mrs. Glutch discovers, to her horror
and indignation, that the new maid-of-all-work
possesses nothing in the shape of
wearing-apparel, except the worn-out garments
actually on her back; and, to make
matters worse, a lady-lodger in the parlour
misses one of a pair of lace-cuffs, and feels
sure that the servant has taken it. There is
not a particle of evidence to support this view
of the case; but Number Two being destitute,
is consequently condemned without a
trial, and dismissed without a character.
She too wanders off forlorn into a world that
has no haven of rest or voice of welcome for
her—wanders off, without so much as a dirty
bundle in her hand—wanders off, voiceless,
with the unchanging grin on the
smut-covered face. How shocked we should all
be, if we opened a book about a savage
country, and saw a portrait of Number
Two in the frontispiece as a specimen of the
female population!

Number Three comes to us all the way from
Wales; arrives late one evening, and is found
at seven the next morning, crying as if she
would break her heart, on the door-step. It
is the first time she has been away from home.
She has not got used yet to being a forlorn
castaway among strangers. She misses the
cows of a morning, the blessed fields with the
blush of sunrise on them, the familiar faces,
the familiar sounds, the familiar cleanliness
of her country home. There is not the
faintest echo of mother's voice, or of father's
sturdy footfall here. Sweetheart John Jones
is hundreds of miles away; and little brother
Joe toddles up door-steps far from these
to clamour for the breakfast which he shall
get this morning from other than his sister's
hands. Is there nothing to cry for in this?
Absolutely nothing, as Mrs. Glutch thinks.
What does this Welsh barbarian mean by
clinging to my area-railings when she ought
to be lighting the fire; by sobbing in full
view of the public of Smeary Street when the
lodgers' bells are ringing angrily for breakfast?
Will nothing get the girl in-doors?
Yes, a few kind words from the woman who
passes by her with my breakfast will. She
knows that the Welsh girl is hungry as well
as home-sick, questions her, finds out that
she has had no supper alter her long journey,
and that she has been tised to breakfast with
the sunrise at the farm in Wales. A few
merciful words lure her away from the railings,
and a little food inaugurates the process
of breaking her in to London service. She
has but a few days allowed her, however, to
practise the virtue of dogged resignation in
her first place. Before she has given me
many opportunities of studying her character,
before she has done knitting her brows with
the desperate mental effort of trying to
comprehend the mystery of my illness, before the
smut has fairly settled on her rosy cheeks,
before the London dirt has dimmed the
pattern on her neat print gown, she, too, is
cast adrift into the world. She has not
suited Mrs. Glutch (being, as I imagine, too
offensively clean to form an appropriate part
of the kitchen furniture)—a friendly maid-of-
all-work, in service near us, has heard of a
place for her—and she is forthwith sent
away to be dirtied and deadened down to
her proper social level in another Lodging-house.

With her, my studies of character among
maids-of-all-work come to an end. I hear
vague rumours of the arrival of Number
Four. But before she appears, I have got the
doctor's leave to move into the country, and
have terminated my experience of London
lodgings, by making my escape with all
convenient speed from the perpetual presence
and persecutions of Mrs. Glutch. I have
witnessed some sad sights during my stay in
Smeary Street, which have taught me to feel
for my poor aud forlorn fellow-creatures as
I do not think I ever felt for them before,
and which have inclined me to doubt for the