But if Biddy is trying to the patience, her stupidity is to a mistress accustomed to English ways almost more bearable than the ’go-as-you-please’—­if I may borrow a phrase from the new American athletic contests—­of the colonial young lady, who comes to be engaged in the most elegant of dresses, bows as she enters the room, seats herself, and smilingly remarks, that she has heard that Mrs. So-and-So is wanting a ‘girl.’  After a little discussion about the work, privileges, etc., and upon the production of some written certificates—­it is almost impossible to obtain personal references, and if it were possible you could not rely upon them—­the engagement is made.  The mistress requires a solemn promise that the servant will come on a certain day, and as often as not the day arrives without her.  Our young lady has been round to a number of mistresses and ‘priced’ their places; she will not wilfully put you in a quandary, but if, after having engaged herself to you, she hears of another situation where there is less work or more wages, she takes it in preference, and leaves you to manage as best you can.  Even when you have got her and found her suitable, you can never tell at what moment she will be pleased to be off ’Tuppence more and up goes the donkey!’—­an inconvenience which is felt much more here, where there is probably only one servant in the house, than it would be in England.

But if it were only higher wages which tempted servants away the remedy would be easy; a few pounds more a year would be cheerfully paid for the convenience of a continuity of one’s household arrangements.  In one year we have had ten servants.  As there were no children, the place was an easy one; but that seemed to make little difference.  At first we kept two, but they did nothing but quarrel; the cook left us on this account.  We took our new cook simply because she happened to be a friend of the housemaid; but before long we found that it was out of the frying-pan into the fire:  the first two had quarrelled ’because there wasn’t sufficient work for two to do;’ the second pair played together so much that they never did any work.  We banished them both, and tried keeping only one servant, which many people had assured us would prove more comfortable.  So far they were right.  Hitherto my wife’s time had chiefly been taken up with looking after the servants, to see that they did their work; now peace reigned in the house.  We gave our maid-of-all-work fifteen shillings a week; we thought we had found a real treasure, and for a month everything went on wheels.  But at the end of that time, just when she was getting accustomed to our ways and we to hers, Sarah gives a week’s notice; she had no fault to find with her mistress, but the place was too dull.  We offered two shillings a week extra but in vain.  Our next stayed six weeks; her reason for leaving was that she did not approve of the back-yard.  Number six stayed for three months; she was very nearly