mentioned my name, as soon as I could make myself heard. The maid
appeared to be terrified at the length of it. I gave her my card. The
maid took it between a dirty finger and thumb--looked at it as if it was
some extraordinary natural curiosity--turned it round, exhibiting correct
black impressions in various parts of it of her finger and thumb--gave up
understanding it in despair, and left the room. She was stopped outside
(as I gathered from the sounds) by a returning invasion of children in
the hall. There was whispering; there was giggling; there was, every now
and then, a loud thump on the door. Prompted by the children, as I
suppose--pushed in by them, certainly--the maid suddenly reappeared with
a jerk, "Oh, if you please, come this way," she said. The invasion of
children retreated again up the stairs--one of them in possession of my
card, and waving it in triumph on the first landing. We penetrated to the
other end of the passage. Again, a door was opened. Unannounced, I
entered another, and a larger room. What did I see?

Fortune had favored me at last. My lucky star had led me to the mistress
of the house.

I made my best curtsey, and found myself confronting a large,
light-haired, languid, lymphatic lady--who had evidently been amusing
herself by walking up and down the room, at the moment when I appeared.
If there can be such a thing as a _damp woman_--this was one. There was a
humid shine on her colorless white face, and an overflow of water in her
pale blue eyes. Her hair was not dressed; and her lace cap was all on one
side. The upper part of her was clothed in a loose jacket of blue merino;
the lower part was robed in a dimity dressing gown of doubtful white. In
one hand, she held a dirty dogs'-eared book, which I at once detected to
be a Circulating Library novel. Her other hand supported a baby enveloped
in flannel, sucking at her breast. Such was my first experience of