His landlady’s little female scrubber was working at the grate in his sitting-room.  He had endured many a struggle to prevent service of this nature being done for him by one of the sex—­at least, to prevent it within his hearing and sight.  He called to her to desist; but she replied that she had her mistress’s orders.  Thereupon he maintained that the grate did not want scrubbing.  The girl took this to be a matter of opinion, not a challenge to controversy, and continued her work in silence.  Irritated by the noise, but anxious not to seem harsh, he said:  “What on earth are you about, when there was no fire there yesterday?”

“There ain’t no stuff for afire now, sir,” said she.

“I tell you I did not light it.”

“It’s been and lit itself then,” she mumbled.

“Do you mean to say you found the fire burnt out, when you entered the room this morning?”

She answered that she had found it so, and lots of burnt paper lying about.

The symbolism of this fire burnt out, that had warmed and cheered none, oppressed his fancy, and he left the small maid-of-all-work to triumph with black-lead and brushes.

She sang out, when she had done:  “If you please, sir, missus have had a hamper up from the country, and would you like a country aig, which is quite fresh, and new lay.  And missus say, she can’t trust the bloaters about here bein’ Yarmouth, but there’s a soft roe in one she’ve squeezed; and am I to stop a water-cress woman, when the last one sold you them, and all the leaves jellied behind ’em, so as no washin’ could save you from swallowin’ some, missus say?”

Sir Purcell rolled over on his side.  “Is this going to be my epitaph?” he groaned; for he was not a man particular in his diet, or exacting in choice of roes, or panting for freshness in an egg.  He wondered what his landlady could mean by sending up to him, that morning of all others, to tempt his appetite after her fashion.  “I thought I remembered eating nothing but toast in this place;” he observed to himself.  A grunting answer had to be given to the little maid, “Toast as usual.”  She appeared satisfied, but returned again, when he was in his bath, to ask whether he had said “No toast to-day?”

“Toast till the day of my death—­tell your mistress that!” he replied; and partly from shame at his unaccountable vehemence, he paused in his sponging, meditated, and chilled.  An association of toast with spectral things grew in his mind, when presently the girl’s voice was heard:  “Please, sir, did say you’d have toast, or not, this morning?” It cost him an effort to answer simply, “Yes.”

That she should continue, “Not sir?” appeared like perversity.  “No aig?” was maddening.

“Well, no; never mind it this morning,” said he.

“Not this morning,” she repeated.

“Then it will not be till the day of your death, as you said,” she is thinking that, was the idea running in his brain, and he was half ready to cry out “Stop,” and renew his order for toast, that he might seem consecutive.  The childishness of the wish made him ask himself what it mattered.  “I said ‘Not till the day;’ so, none to-day would mean that I have reached the day.”  Shivering with the wet on his pallid skin, he thought this over.