“Oh! don’t stop, Aunt Judy! Do go on, Cooky dear! do tell some more! Did you always live in that place, please?”
“There now!” exclaimed Aunt Judy, throwing herself back in the chair, “isn’t that a regular young lady’s question, out and out? Who but a young lady, with no more sense in her head than a pin, would have thought of asking such a thing? Why, miss, is there a joint in the world that can bear basting for ever? No, no! a time comes when it must be taken down, if any good’s to be left in it; and so at the end of three years my basting-time was over, and the time for taking down was come.
“‘Cook,’ says I to myself, ‘you must give in. If you go on with those cherubs (that was their company name, you know) much longer, there won’t be a bit of you left!’ And, sure enough, that very morning, dears, they’d come down upon me with a fresh grievance, and I couldn’t stand it, I really couldn’t! The sweeps had been by four o’clock to the kitchen chimney, and I’d been up and toiling every minute since, and hadn’t had time to eat my breakfast, when in they burst—the young ladies, not the sweeps, dears, I mean:—and there they broke out at once—I hadn’t fed their sea-gulls before breakfast—(a couple of dull-looking grey birds, with big mouths, that had come in a hamper over night as a present to the cherubs;) and it seems I ought to have been up before daylight almost, to look for slugs for them in the garden till they’d got used to the place!
“Oh, these ladies and gentlemen! they’d need know something of some sort to make amends, for there are many things they never know all their life long!
“‘Young ladies,’ says I, ‘I didn’t come here to get meals ready for sea-gulls, but Christian ladies and gentlemen. If the sea-gulls want a cook, your mamma must hire them one on purpose. I’ve plenty to do for her and the family, without looking after such nonsense as that!’
“‘That’s what you always say,’ whimpers the youngest Miss; ‘and you know they don’t want any cooking, but only raw slugs! And you know you might easily look for them, because you’ve got almost nothing to do, because it’s such an easy place, mamma always says. But you’re always cross, mamma says that too, and everybody knows you are, because she tells everybody!’
“When little Miss had got that out, she thought she’d finished me up; and so she had, for when I heard that Missus was so ungenteel as to go talking of what I did, to all her acquaintance, and had nothing better to talk about, I made up my mind that I’d give notice that very day.
“‘Very well, miss,’ says I, ‘your mamma shall soon have something fresh to talk about, and I hope she’ll find it a pleasant change.’
“There was some of them knew what I meant at once, for after they’d scampered off I heard shouts up and down the stairs from one to the other, ‘Cook’s going!’ ‘We shall have a new cook soon!’ ‘What a lark we’ll have with the toffey and the pies! We’ll make her do just as we choose!’
“‘There, now,’ thought I to myself, ‘there’ll be somebody else put down to baste before long. Well, I’m glad my time’s over.’ And thereupon I fell to wishing I was back again in father and mother’s ricketty old cottage, that I’d once been so proud to leave, to go and live with gentlefolks. But, you see, it was no use wishing, for I’d my bread to earn, and must turn out somewhere, let it be as disagreeable as it would. Father and mother were dead, and there was no ricketty cottage for me to go back to, so I wiped my eyes, and told myself to make the best of what had to be.