I can’t tell you the trouble we had with her; but the end of it was she suddenly made her appearance in the ball-room with her cap very much on one side, and her face very flushed, and said, “Where’s Mr. —— [naming the master]? I have a communication to make to him.”
Master was horrified, and missus said, “Good gracious, who is this person?”
“Person, madam?” said the new housekeeper, “I’d have you to know I’m a real lady, which is more than you are.”
She made as if she would come across to missus, but she staggered, and fell into the arms of a very stout old gentleman, and put her arms round his neck, and began to have hysterics, and the waiter and master had to get her away by main force between them, the company almost bursting with laughter.
Master was in an awful rage, and said he’d turn her out there and then, but he couldn’t in her condition, and so two of us girls got her upstairs and put her to bed, and we thought she’d go off to sleep; but just as the company had sat down to supper in the bedroom, which had been turned into a supper-room, she appeared with a candle in her hand, like Lady Macbeth, and no cap on, only her bald head, looking the most extraordinary figure you ever saw in your life, and asked if there was a doctor present, as she felt very ill, and was liable to heart attacks if not taken in time.
Master and the waiter had to get her out again; but missus was in a terrible rage about it, and went on at master before all the company, saying he ought to be ashamed of himself, bringing such a creature into the house. And the rest of the party was quite spoilt, missus going off to bed herself in a temper, saying she had a bad headache, and master was so worried that he took a little more champagne than was good for him, and slipped up dancing, and hit his eye against a rout seat, and made it so bad he was disfigured for the rest of the evening, and went and hid himself down in the breakfast-room till the company were gone, which they soon were, as everything was upset, and it got awkward.
The next day when the old lady got up, about ten o’clock, she came down and ordered her breakfast, and was beginning to missus it again, and say what she was going to do, and how she was going to keep missus in her place, when master came and told her to be off. He gave her ten shillings, and ordered her box to be brought down and put on a cab, and told her she was a wicked old woman, and she ought to be ashamed of herself.
She refused to go at first, saying she was engaged for three months, and she wanted three months’ money. But she was got into the cab at last, and we were all very thankful to see the last of her.
But she sent master a County Court summons for three months’ wages, and he had no end of trouble with her. And through going and giving his friend, who had recommended her, a bit of his mind, they quarrelled, and never spoke again; and missus, having put herself in such a rage the night before, and gone to bed, got up cross the next morning, wild with herself and everybody else, and had an awful quarrel with her mother, who was very rich, and who reprimanded her for being so passionate, and it caused such a coldness between them that, when a year after the mother died, it was found she had altered her will, and left all her money to charitable institutions, and master reckoned that he was twenty thousand pounds out through doing a friend a good turn in giving that old lady a job, besides all the worry and annoyance and the unpleasantness that had come of it.
It was writing about Mr. Wilkins and his doing the boy-highwayman’s grandmother a good turn that put this story into my head; but, of course, it happened while I was in service, and has nothing to do with the ‘Stretford Arms.’