much Mrs. Pettifer's as her ladyship's. If
the youthful scions of that illustrious house
are to take, according to her sovereign will,
an airing in the Park, and the Marchioness
is desirous of attending a meeting of the
ladies' committee of the Penitent Cannibals
Society, she may take the brougham;
Martha Pettifer must have the great body
vehicle. If, on the other hand, a visit is to
be made to Mr. Manismooth, the dentist's,
Martha boldly usurps the close carriage, and,
bleak as may be the day, and lowering the
clouds, leaves her mistress to shift for herself
—even when Lord Candyshire (whose silent
services at the House of Lords involve the
carrying about of a huge mass of papers) has
bespoken the curly-wigged coachman and the
horses for the conveyance of himself and
blue-books to Westminster. As to poor
Mademoiselle Frileuse, the thin Swiss governess,
with her charge, Lady Ariadne Toffie, aged
eleven, she may take what vehicle she can get.

Martha Pettifer, notwithstanding her high
estate of carriage, and curly-wigged coachman
and batooned footman, does not ape the apparel
of an aristocrat. There is no mistaking her
for a marchioness; she is above that. She
towers high among the youthful Candyshires,
erect and stately, comfortably clad in woollen
and stout silk. At shops and exhibitions, at
the gate of that favourite resort of the juvenile
aristocracy, the Zoological Gardens in the
Regent's Park, you may see the great Candyshire
carriage standing; or you may watch
it rolling leisurely through Hyde Park, the
Candyshire children looking as beautiful and
as delicate as only British children can look.
Aristocratic mammas roll by in their carriages
and remark, with languid complacency, how
well the dear children look, and what a
treasure Lady Candyshire must have in her
nurse.

Which is best, think you, Mademoiselle
Frileuse, to be—after a tedious intellectual
training which may fit you to become a
duchess, inasmuch as you are expected to
impart it to a young lady who may be a
duchess some day—a governess with forty
pounds a year " salary," or to be Mrs. Pettifer,
a nurse, with fifty pounds a year " wages "?
Have you a tithe as much authority over
your pupil as she has over her nurslings?
Can you command the footmen, and make the
nursemaids tremble? Does the Marchioness
defer to you, and say, "Pettifer, I dare say
you know best, therefore do as you like."
Can you contradict the doctor, the mighty
Sir Paracelsus Powgrave, and make poor
little Mr. Pildrag, the apothecary, tremble in
his cloth boots when he comes to lance the
children's gums? Is all your lingual skill,
your drawing, your painting, your harp and
pianoforte cunning, your geography, your
use of the globes, and your rudiments of
Latin, held as of half so much account as
Mrs. Pettifers experiences in the administration
of a foot-bath, in the virtues of lambs'
wool socks, in the efficacy of a Dover's powder?
You are to teach the children the learning
which is to fortify their minds, the graces
which are to adorn their persons for the
tournament of the world; but yonder illiterate
woman who gives the children their physic,
superintends their washing and dressing,
and cuts their bread and butter, thinks and
knows herself to be infinitely superior to you,,
"a bit of a governess, indeed!"

There are nurses in all grades and conditions
of life who want places just now, but
they all, on a correspondingly descending
scale, are fashioned after the Pettifer model.
Some are temporary and some permanent;
some ready to take the child from the month,
some preferring the care of children of more
advanced growth. Then there is the
transition nurse—half nurse, half nursemaid, and
not averse to subsiding into the anomalous
position of a "young ladies' maid." There
are nurses of tender hearts apt to conceive
an affection for their charges greater than
that a mother ever had for her own children;
who grieve as passionately when they are
separated from them as those good
Normandy women do who take the babes from
the Foundling Hospital in Paris. Such
nurses will, after lapses of long years, and
from immense distances, suddenly start up
looking as young, or rather as old as ever,
and shed tears of delight at the sight and
speech of their nurse children, grown men
and women with children of their own to
nurse. Woe is me that there should be found,
among this apparently simple-minded and
affectionate class, persons who make of their
once state of nursehood a kind of prescriptive
ground for future claims. " Nurses! " says
my friend Brown, with a groan, " I 've had
enough of 'em. My mother had thirteen
children, and I have had seven of my own;
and every now and then I am beset with
importunate old women curtseying, hang 'em,
and saying, 'Please, sir, I nursed you,' or,
'Please, sir, I was master Tommy's nurse;'
and expect five shillings and a pound of green
tea."

Then there is Mrs. Crapper, whom I may
characterise as the "back streets nurse," who
is strictly temporary, and whose connection
lies chiefly among small tradesmen and
well-to-do mechanics. She dwells somewhere in
Drury Court or Carnaby Street, Golden
Square, or Denmark Street, Soho, in a
many-belled house, over a chandler's shop, or a
bookstall, perhaps. The intuitive prescience
of being wanted possessed by this woman is
to me astonishing. She never requires to be
"fetched" like the doctor—apparently so, at
least. She seems to come up some domestic
trap. There she is at her post, with a wonderful
free-masonic understanding with the doctor,
and the Registrar of Births, and the undertaker,
and the sexton, and all the misty
functionaries, whisperingly talked of but
seldom seen, connected with our coming in