Before leaving the subject of short terms of service, it should be noted that the modern servant openly avows her love of change.  An excellent mistress, and a very kind one, has told me that housemaids and kitchenmaids have given her warning again and again for no other cause than this.  They have avowed themselves quite happy and contented in their place, but they want ‘fresh woods and pastures new.’  When Jack Mytton was reminded by his lawyer that a certain estate he was about to sell had been in his family for 500 years, he replied, ’Then it’s high time it should go out of it;’ and the same reflection occurs to our Janes and Bessies.  They have been in their present situation a year perhaps, or two at most—­indeed, two years is considered in the world below stairs the extreme point for any person of spirit to remain under one roof—­and it is high time they should leave it.  One would naturally think that, in the case of young women at all events, they would be slow to exchange even a moderately comfortable place for a home among strangers; that they would bear the ills they know of, even if ills exist, rather than venture on those of which they know nothing; but this is far from being the case.  Nor do they even quit their place in order ‘to better themselves.’  They have absolutely no reason except the love of change.  Behaviour of this sort naturally gives some colour to the remark already quoted that servants are not ‘reasonable beings.’  I was almost a convert to that opinion myself when, on one occasion, having asked a female domestic to be good enough to put my boots on the tree, she literally obeyed my order.  She hung all my boots on the tree in the garden, and it was very wet weather.  But to young persons who come from the country everything is pardonable—­except ‘temper.’

The growth of this parasite in both town and country is, however, quite alarming.  Little as mistresses dare to say to the disadvantage of servants when leaving their employment, no matter for what reason, they do sometimes remark of them that their temper is ‘uncertain.’  When this happens and the fact is communicated to Jane or Betsy by the lady to whom they have proposed themselves, they have one invariable method of self-defence:  ’Temper, mum?  Well, I ’ave my faults, I daresay, but not that; all as knows me knows my temper is ’eavenly.  But the fact is, mum, Mrs. Jones [her late mistress] was a bit flighty.’  And she touches her forehead, and even sometimes winks, to indicate aberration of the intellect.  A really good-tempered servant is now rare; and there are very few who will bear ‘speaking to’ when their work is neglected or ill-done.