“Then, of course, there comes a scuffle, and Master Whipper-snapper begins to roar, and out comes Missus, who, poor thing, had no more sense in her head than her sons, though she’d never been to school to lose it over Latin and Greek; and, says she, with all her ribbons streaming, and her petticoats swelled out like a window-curtain in a draught—says she:—
“‘Cook! I desire that you will not touch my children!’
“‘As you please, ma’am,’ says I, ‘if you’ll be so good as to stop the young gentlemen from touching my pans, and—’ I was going to say ‘custard,’ but Master James shouts out quite quick:—
“‘Why, I only wanted to make a pie, mamma.’
“‘And I only wanted to make some toffey!’ cries Whipper-snapper; and then mamma answers, like a duchess at court:—
“‘There can’t possibly be any objection, my dears; and I wish, Cook, you would he a little more good-natured to the children;—your temper is sadly against you!’
“And out she sails, ribbons and window-curtains and all; and, says I to myself, as I cooled down, (for the young gentlemen luckily went away with their dear mama,)—says I to myself, ‘It’s a very fine thing, no doubt, to go about in ribbons, and petticoats, and grand clothes; but, if one must needs carry such a poor, silly head inside them, as Missus does, I’d rather stop as I am, and be a cook with some sense about me.’
“I don’t say, my dears,” continued the supposed cook, “that I spoke very politely just then; but who could feel polite, when their dinner had been put back at least half-an-hour over such nonsense as that? Missus used to say the ‘dear boys’ came to the kitchen on a wet day, because they’d got nothing else to do! Nothing else to do! and had learnt Latin and Greek, and all sorts of schooling besides! So much for education, thought I. Why, it would spoil the best lads that ever were born into the world. For, of course, you know if these young gentlemen had been put to decent trades, they’d have found something else to do with their fingers besides mischief and waste. 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:—