On that Saturday night with which our narrative
is concerned, and while the herbalist was
most busy, the figure of a lady might have been
seen, if any one had taken the trouble to notice
it, gazing in at the shop window in an uneasy and
wistful manner, and then looking about her as if
undecided how to act. The lady was muffled up
closely in a woollen shawl, and her face was
covered with a veil, the pattern of which was so
thick and spreading that it was impossible to
judge of her features with any accuracy. She
seemed to want to enter the shop, and yet to
hesitate about it, and would sometimes even
walk a little way in another direction, and then
return. On one of these occasions of her
returning to the shop, she seemed at last to have
made up her mind, and, not waiting to think any
more about it, she turned swiftly in at the door
and advanced to where the wise man—in a
temporary lull of custom—was standing behind
his counter absorbed in thought, and mounted,
no doubt, upon his favourite hobby.

The lady made straight up to him, and they
were soon engaged in a conversation apparently
of some interest, but it was conducted in so low
a key, that only a word occasionally pronounced
in the louder tones of the stalwart herbalist
was at all audible. Ultimately, and after a
great many pros and cons, some preparation, on
which a great deal of care had been bestowed,
was handed over to the lady, who paid for what
she had received at once, and left the shop
closely veiled, as she had entered it.

CHAPTER V. KEEPING HOUSE.

THE scene in the herbalist's shop commemorated
in the last chapter is represented as having
taken place in the month of December, whilst,
on reference to the chapter which preceded it, it
will be found that the arrival of Miss Carrington
in London occurred in November. There had
been time in the interval for all the disagreeable
qualities possessed by Miss Carrington and her
amiable domestic to become fully developed;
nor was it possible, after that first night, that
Mrs. Penmore could keep her husband in
ignorance of what was going on.

In the first place, it was indispensable that the
question of the little study up-stairs, and its
abdication by the legitimate owner, should be
discussed, and this implied the necessity of touching
on Miss Cantanker's peculiar temper, as shown in
her announcement that she neither could nor
would remain in the apartment which had been
originally prepared for her. So, by degrees, it
came out that this good-natured person was
likely to be then and always a source of great
trouble and annoyance in the house. The
luckless Gilbert, reckoning without his host,
suggested that if Miss Cantanker did not like her
quarters, Miss Cantanker might go; but here
his wife was in a condition to set him right.
"Her mistress," she said, "would as soon think
of parting with her right hand, as of dismissing
her attendant, who had managed to get an
ascendancy over her about which there could be
no doubt. The two must go or stay together—
there was no doubt about that."

And so it ended in the little study being
confiscated, and poor Gilbert had to execute such
work as he did at home, either in his small
dressing-room which had no fireplace, or in the
dining-room, when it was not wanted for other
purposes.

Our young people were, unhappily, not
successful in providing either mistress or maid with
meals which were suited to their respective
palates, and it must be freely acknowledged that
the unfortunate Charlotte did seem to have
been struck with a sort of paralysis ever since
the arrival of Miss Carrington and her
confidential maid. This last especially appeared to
have the power of reducing the poor servant-of-
all-work to a state of temporary insanity, by the
mere fact of her being at times present in the
kitchen. "I'm that flurried, mum," she said to
her mistress, when trying on one occasion to
excuse one of her worst failures, "I'm that
flurried when she comes nigh me, that I don't
know a rump-steak from a mutton-chop." The
consequence of this state of things was, that
certainly some very remarkable specimens of
cookery did, from time to time, appear on
table at the little house in Beaumont-street.
Joints strangely combining a burnt-up outside,
revealed at the very first cut a raw inside;
potatoes mealy without, but resembling bullets
when attacked with the spoon; semolina
puddings, whose semolina had coagulated into hard
lumps, refusing to have anything to say to the
mysterious and whey-like liquid which formed
the main body of the pudding. The fact is,
that the treatment applied by our artist to the
raw material on which her powers were to be
displayed, was always of too fierce and rapid a
sort. Furious heat was applied, such as no food
could stand long and exist. It did not stand it
long, and, in consequence, was not done through.

Hence, the flesh of the fried sole was
inseparable from the bones, while the cauliflower,
beautiful to look at, was found, on inquiring
within, to be raw and indigestible.

The wily Cantanker, indeed, was not the
woman to allow her digestive faculties to be
thus tampered with. She took all her meals in
the room which she had succeeded in abstracting
from its hapless owner, and as she prepared
them with her own hands below, was continually
to be met on the stairs carrying up some savoury
and succulent morsel, wearing at the same time
the expression of countenance of a martyr in some
great cause. This remarkable person was also
always ready to take in hand the preparation of
any article or articles of food of which it was
distinctly understood that her mistress alone
was to be partaker. She would make Miss
Carrington's breakfast in the morning, poaching
her eggs, and cooking her toast with the
greatest care, and she would also insist on
making the broth, a cup of which her mistress
always consumed the last thing at night, but
with the dinner she would have nothing to do.
"Mr. and Mrs. Penmore," she would say,