“‘Please don’t offer me any refreshment, Mistress Perkins,’ I says, ‘because my stomach is weak, and I can’t stand it; a thimbleful of brandy would knock me over, my dear, in a minute.’
“Because a glass of ginger wine don’t cost much, you know, my dear; and if you accepts their little deceitful offers, they always takes advantage of it to wear the very legs off the poor servant girl, and me too, if I’d let ’em.
“But I lets ’em ring away till tired, and takes no notice, until they comes down stairs themselves, and then when they knocks at my door, I seems surprised not to hear the bell, and then they gets what they want.
“Bless you, my dear, if something wasn’t done, we should wear the stairs out.
“First there’s old Mr. Brown upstairs, he wants hot water half-a-dozen times a day and can’t hear the dinner bell without it is rung outside his door.
“Mistress Perkins is always in want of something, and that wretched pet dog of hers is always causing trouble.
“It was only the other day I missed a beefsteak off the kitchen table, and at last I traced it upstairs to Mistress Perkins,’ door, where the dog stood growling and showing his teeth, until in fright I upset the servant maid and her pail of water, and fell headlong down stairs.”
The smiling old scoundrel, Sir Andrew, would sit and listen to the good old dame, as she recounted her trials and troubles, and would nod in approval as meekly as a lamb.
But he was a deep designing old villain, as we shall see.
It is true that the old dame had fallen downstairs and seriously hurt herself and was then very ill.