What, however, always puts them in the highest good humour is an expensive breakage.  When Susan comes to say, ’Oh, please, mum, I’ve ’ad a haccident with the pier glass,’ her face is wreathed in smiles.  To a mistress who cannot relieve her feelings by strong language, as a man would do, this behaviour is very aggravating.  If servants do not actually delight in these misfortunes, I am afraid not one in twenty shows the least consideration for her employer’s purse.  It is charitable to say, when Thomas or Jane leaves the gas burning all night, or the sun-blinds out in the pouring rain, that they have ’no head;’ but it is my experience that they are very careful, and, indeed, take quite extraordinary precautions, with respect to their own property.  I am afraid that the true reason of the waste and extravagance among servants is that they have no attachment to their employers, and of course it is less troublesome to be lavish than to be economical.  All the education in the world cannot make selfish persons unselfish; but it can surely implant in them some sense of duty.  At present, so long as a servant is not absolutely dishonest, her conscience rarely troubles her.  This is especially the case with our cooks, who also—­that ‘dripping’ question making their path so slippery—­draw the line between honesty and its contrary very fine indeed.

Moreover, they know less of what they pretend to know than any other class of servant.  The proof of this is in the fact that not one in a hundred of them will cook you a dinner on trial.  I have often said to a cook, ’Your character is satisfactory enough in other respects; but, before engaging you, will you show what you can do by sending up one good dinner, for which I will pay you at the ordinary rate—­namely, half-a-guinea?’ She won’t do it; she says she can cook for a prince, and affects to be hurt at the proposition.  The consequence is that for a month, at least, we are slowly poisoned.  Once only I hired a cook who accepted these terms.  I am bound to say she sent us up a most excellent dinner, but when I sent for her to pay the half-guinea she was dead drunk on the kitchen floor.  She had taken a bottle of port wine and one of stout while serving up that entertainment, and afterwards confessed that during her arduous duties she required ‘constant support.’  Again, it is by no means unusual for cooks to succeed to admiration for a week and then to begin to spoil everything, the proverb respecting a ’new broom’ applying, curiously enough, even more to them than to the ‘housemaids.’

These observations are no doubt severe, but they are not unjust; nor do I for a moment imply that servants are always to blame, and never mistresses.  There are faults on both sides.  Ladies often show themselves as ‘unreasonable’ as their female domestics.  For example, although very solicitous for the settlement of their own daughters in life, they often do not give sufficient opportunities for their maid-servants