And, dear me, I talk about not having been polite to Missus just then, but now you tell me, dears, what Missus, with all her education, would have said if she’d been in my place, when one young gentleman was drinking her custard, and another young gentleman was pulling her pans on the floor!  Do you think she’d have been a bit more polite than I was?  Wouldn’t she have called me all the stupid creatures that ever were born, and told the story over and over to all her friends and acquaintance to make them stare, and say there were surely no such simpletons in the world as ladies and gentlemen, and ladies’ and gentlemen’s young ladies and young gentlemen?

“However, I did not go as far as that, because, you see, I had some sense about me, and could make allowances for all the nonsense the poor things are brought up to.”

There was no resisting the twinkle in Aunt Judy’s eye when she came to this point, though it shone through an old pair of Nurse’s spectacles; and the little ones clapped their hands, and declared it was every bit as good as a Cook story, only A great deal better!  That twinkle had quite brought Aunt Judy back to them again, in spite of her cook’s attire, and No. 6 cried out:-

“Oh! don’t stop, Aunt Judy!  Do go on, Cooky dear! do tell some more!  Did you always live in that place, please?”

“There now!” exclaimed Aunt Judy, throwing herself back in the chair, “isn’t that a regular young lady’s question, out and out?  Who but a young lady, with no more sense in her head than a pin, would have thought of asking such a thing?  Why, miss, is there a joint in the world that can bear basting for ever?  No, no! a time comes when it must be taken down, if any good’s to be left in it; and so at the end of three years my basting-time was over, and the time for taking down was come.

“‘Cook,’ says I to myself, ’you must give in.  If you go on with those cherubs (that was their company name, you know) much longer, there won’t be a bit of you left!’ And, sure enough, that very morning, dears, they’d come down upon me with a fresh grievance, and I couldn’t stand it, I really couldn’t!  The sweeps had been by four o’clock to the kitchen chimney, and I’d been up and toiling every minute since, and hadn’t had time to eat my breakfast, when in they burst—­the young ladies, not the sweeps, dears, I mean:- and there they broke out at once—­I hadn’t fed their sea-gulls before breakfast—­(a couple of dull-looking grey birds, with big mouths, that had come in a hamper over night as a present to the cherubs;) and it seems I ought to have been up before daylight almost, to look for slugs for them in the garden till they’d got used to the place!

“Oh, these ladies and gentlemen! they’d need know something of some sort to make amends, for there are many things they never know all their life long!

“‘Young ladies,’ says I, ’I didn’t come here to get meals ready for sea-gulls, but Christian ladies and gentlemen.  If the sea-gulls want a cook, your mamma must hire them one on purpose.  I’ve plenty to do for her and the family, without looking after such nonsense as that!’