across. Occasionally, it is correct information; but, speaking broadly,
it is remarkable for its marvellous unreliability. Where he gets it from
is a secret that nobody has ever yet been able to fathom.

Ethelbertha was very young when we started housekeeping. (Our first
butcher very nearly lost her custom, I remember, once and for ever by
calling her "Missie," and giving her a message to take back to her
mother. She arrived home in tears. She said that perhaps she wasn't fit
to be anybody's wife, but she did not see why she should be told so by
the tradespeople.) She was naturally somewhat inexperienced in domestic
affairs, and, feeling this keenly, was grateful to any one who would give
her useful hints and advice. When MacShaughnassy came along he seemed,
in her eyes, a sort of glorified Mrs. Beeton. He knew everything wanted
to be known inside a house, from the scientific method of peeling a
potato to the cure of spasms in cats, and Ethelbertha would sit at his
feet, figuratively speaking, and gain enough information in one evening
to make the house unlivable in for a month.

He told her how fires ought to be laid. He said that the way fires were
usually laid in this country was contrary to all the laws of nature, and
he showed her how the thing was done in Crim Tartary, or some such place,
where the science of laying fires is alone properly understood. He
proved to her that an immense saving in time and labour, to say nothing
of coals, could be effected by the adoption of the Crim Tartary system;
and he taught it to her then and there, and she went straight downstairs
and explained it to the girl.

Amenda, our then "general," was an extremely stolid young person, and, in
some respects, a model servant. She never argued. She never seemed to
have any notions of her own whatever. She accepted our ideas without