The next consideration was how I was to get myself a character, as I certainly could not apply to my late employers for one. Of course it was open to me to supply myself with it in the same way I had done before; but though I had then thought it a good joke and laughed at the deception I practised, yet somehow I did not find myself taking to the idea nearly as kindly now. I had been in the habit of making fools of people for the mere fun of the thing, and had regarded a falsehood much as the historian Green says that Queen Elizabeth did, i.e. as an intellectual means of meeting a difficulty. But my views seemed to have undergone an alteration of late, and I was conscious of a certain amount of repugnance for what was untrue, which perhaps showed that my intercourse with Kitty had had some effect in educating my conscience, and that I had imbibed something of her contempt for lies. Therefore I hesitated about writing a false character; and no doubt my scruples were all the more lively in consequence of my recent detection and narrow escape of prosecution for forgery; for I had a horror of going to prison.
Consider as I might, however, I could see no honest way out of the difficulty. A character I must have, as without one I had no chance of a situation, and without a situation I should starve. And as I had no one to give me a character, I was bound to give it myself. So—with a sigh for my own roguery—I took a pen and indited an epistle, highly recommending Caroline Jill, from a lady with whom she had lived two years and eight months, and who, before departing for the Cape (where she did not want to be accompanied by a maid) had written this character for the aforesaid Jill. I flatter myself it was an artistic composition, decidedly complimentary, and yet not ascribing to me such perfection as might arouse suspicion by its incompatibility with the frailty of human nature.
After waiting for two or three weeks without receiving a single answer to my advertisement, and searching the papers diligently during that time without discovering any place advertised of the kind that I wanted, I came to the conclusion that travelling-maids were at a discount just at present. Living in lodgings and earning nothing was too expensive a process to be continued long, so it seemed to me that I had better alter my plans, and try and be something which was not at a discount. Should I go in for being a shopwoman? But that was a monotonous existence, I thought, with not enough chance of variety and amusement to suit me. And then it struck me that I might let my talents as courier-maid lie idle for a while, and try for an ordinary lady's-maid's situation. I knew that my lack of dressmaking knowledge was much against that scheme; but still I might have the luck to meet with one of those ladies who always have their dresses made out. At any rate I determined to make the attempt.
As soon as possible next morning I procured one or two newspapers, copied the addresses of as many advertisers for ladies-maids as I should be able to go and see in the day, and set off to call upon these ladies. At every place, however, I found that dressmaking was an indispensable qualification, and I returned to my lodgings weary and unsuccessful. Next day I repeated the process with no better result; and on the third day also it was just the same story over again. Wherever I went there was a universal demand for dressmaking on the part of the maid; and I began to wonder if, in all England, there existed such a person as a struggling dressmaker; and if so, why she did not instantly take to lady's-maiding.
Though discouraged by these repeated failures, I thought I would still persevere a little longer before giving up, and accordingly started on a fourth day's round as before. In the course of them I came to the house of a Mrs. Torwood, who lived in Chester Square. My ring at her bell was not answered for several minutes, and I was thinking of repeating it when a noise something like a miniature steam-engine approaching from within the house made me pause to see what was coming. Directly afterwards the door was opened, and I perceived that the pulling and blowing I had heard proceeded from a fat, apoplectic-looking man-servant, to whom stairs were evidently antipathetic, and who was panting tremendously after his ascent from the inferior regions to the front-door. Being too much out of breath to waste words, he only nodded affirmatively when I inquired whether his mistress was at home and disengaged.
"Then please will you go and tell her," I said, "that I have called about the maid's place, and ask if she can see me now?"
By this time he had recovered sufficiently to be able to speak.
"Why it's hanother of 'em! Is this hever going to hend?" he groaned in a melancholy voice, when he heard what my errand was. Then, some happy thought seemed to occur to him, for his face brightened, and he muttered to himself, "But why shouldn't she and me settle it? I'll soon see if it's hany good her going further." And without stirring from the spot, or giving the slightest indication of any intention of taking my message, he addressed me thus:
"'Scuse me hasking, miss, but was your father, or hany near relative of yours, a 'untsman?"
"No," I answered, whereupon his countenance fell a little, and he resumed: