But before beginning my account of that wretched half-witted girl, I should like the reader to understand that it is far from my nature to blame any menial for want of those intellects which are not in our power to command. Of course, poor servants can’t be expected to have had the inestimable blessings of a finished education, like ourselves, and, therefore, a deficiency of understanding in them should be rather pitied than blamed. Though with respect to my Emma, her abominable stupidity was so hard to bear with, that at times, upon my word, it was as much as ever I could do to keep myself from flying out at her, and giving it her soundly. Often and often have I been forced to have a hard battle with myself, to prevent myself from shaking her well, and trying to knock something like sense into the stupid’s brain. It’s all very well for a pack of self-conceited men to say “that a good woman has no head.” I’m sure for the matter of that, my Emma had none at all, and she was bad enough, heaven knows! But what in my opinion, deprived the pitiable object of all sympathy was, that she wasn’t wholly uneducated, and had been taught to read and write, but la! the benefits of reading and writing were entirely thrown away upon her; and I verily believe that even if her education had extended to the blessings of the use of the globes, she would have been as little like a rational creature, after all. It’s all very well to talk about manuring the soil, but what are you to do, I should like to know, when there’s no soil to manure? As Edward very truly said, as for furnishing her upper story, you might have put in the table of weights and measures and a complete bookcase beside, and even then her head would have been as empty as ever, for it would all have gone in at one ear and come out at the other; and, as he very wittily added, the girl’s knowledge-box was lined with less reading than a hair trunk.
The stupid things the girl would say and do, and the dreadful scrapes she would get me into, all through her horrible simplicity, were enough to make the blood of a gold fish boil. Positively, one was always obliged to be speaking by the card, as Hamlet says in the play, though what speaking by the card means I really can’t say, for I never knew anybody but the sapient pig Toby, who was accustomed to do so. If you wanted anything done, you had to tell it to her in a hundred different ways, or else she would be sure to make some dreadful blunder or other; for, as for the flowers of speech, bless you! she paid no more regard to flowers than a cat does! If a double knock came to the door early in the day, and I had my hair in papers, or was down in the kitchen, seeing about dear Edward’s dinner, or was in the bed-room, making up the dirty linen for the wash, or in the drawing-room, dusting the china, (and consequently not dressed to receive company) and I told her, “I wouldn’t see them, and that I was out,” down stairs she’d frisk, and say to whomever it might be, “Missus says she wont see you, and she’s out.” Now I put it to every respectable married woman (who of course has, over and over again, been obliged to tell hundreds of white fibs like this in her time,) whether it wasn’t enough to ruffle a quaker, to have your best friends—carriage-folks, may be—insulted and turned away from your door in such a dreadful way?
Again, I recollect just as the evenings were getting chilly, I thought Edward would relish a round or two of nice hot toast—not cut too thick, and well buttered—indeed, I thought I could take a mouthful of it myself—and accordingly, having told Miss Emma to make some, she must needs, when she brought it up, go setting it down on the slop basin. So I said to her, “Bless me, Emma, what is that footman down stairs for, I should like to know?”
“There’s no footman down stairs, I can assure you, mum,” answered the stupid thing, staring her eyes half out of her head with wonder.
“I tell you there is,” I exclaimed, “under the dresser. At least, all I can say is, there was this morning—though you know as well as I do, that it’s no business to be lying there, all among the pots and pans—especially when I had a hook put up over the fire-place on purpose to have the footman hung upon. Why don’t you go and bring the thing up directly?” I continued, as she stood lost in astonishment. “Perhaps you will tell me next that it’s walked out of the house!”
“There’s been no footman in the house, mum, ever since I’ve been here,” she answered, sobbing, and wiping her eyes with her apron. “The only one I’ve seen, I’m sure, is Mr. Simmons’ John, and he was sowing potatoes in the garden next door.”
“Bless the child!” I cried out, “was there ever such a stupid!” and actually I had to take her down stairs and teach her that a footman was a thing made of brass, with legs that would go inside any fender, and used in the best of families to stand a hot toast before the fire of a winter’s evening—and that I supposed was the reason why they gave the thing such a name.
I declare it really wasn’t prudent to trust that Emma to do a thing, and even that little lamb of a Kitty of mine was scarcely safe with a stupid, like her, in the house. For I recollect once, I had been thinking the simpleton had a great deal of spare time on her hands, and might just as well do a little needlework, as sit twiddling her finger and thumb of an evening, so I told her that my little poppet of a Kitty was growing so fast that all her things were getting too short for her, and she really wanted a tuck out in her best frock, and would certainly look all the better for it, so I would thank her to attend to it that night, and let it be done before she went to bed. In the evening, I was in the parlour, boiling down some quince pips to make a nice fixature for my hair, and all the while I could hear that sweet little cherub of mine down stairs crying; so I said to myself what the dickens can that idiot be doing with the child in the kitchen at this time of night, when it ought to have been undressed and in bed a good hour ago? Off I trotted to see what precious bit of stupidity my lady was at now. When I reached the kitchen I thought I should have fainted, for there sat that Emma, with my little angel on her knee, dressed out in its best frock, and with its dear little innocent face daubed all over with treacle, just as if it had been tarred. “What on earth have you been doing with the child, Emma?” I exclaimed.
“I thought as you said it was to have a tuck out in its best frock, ma’am,” she replied, “it could have nothing nicer than plenty of bread and treacle.” And then to my horror I learnt from her, that when I told her I fancied the child would look all the better for having a tuck out in its best frock, bless and save us, if the stupid oaf didn’t imagine that I wished it to have a grand feast in its Sunday clothes! “Oh, you stupid, stupid thing!” I said, “and what business have you to go giving the darling all that mess, when the doctor has ordered me to let it have nothing but slops?”
“Nothing but slops, mum!” she exclaimed, with her mouth wide open with astonishment.