as ill-luck would have it, were generally handsome and unmarried.
Fanny's lovers, if she had any--and Miss Matilda suspected her of
so many flirtations that, if she had not been very pretty, I should
have doubted her having one--were a constant anxiety to her
mistress. She was forbidden, by the articles of her engagement, to
have "followers"; and though she had answered, innocently enough,
doubling up the hem of her apron as she spoke, "Please, ma'am, I
never had more than one at a time," Miss Matty prohibited that one.
But a vision of a man seemed to haunt the kitchen. Fanny assured
me that it was all fancy, or else I should have said myself that I
had seen a man's coat-tails whisk into the scullery once, when I
went on an errand into the store-room at night; and another
evening, when, our watches having stopped, I went to look at the
clock, there was a very odd appearance, singularly like a young man
squeezed up between the clock and the back of the open kitchen-
door: and I thought Fanny snatched up the candle very hastily, so
as to throw the shadow on the clock face, while she very positively
told me the time half-an-hour too early, as we found out afterwards
by the church clock. But I did not add to Miss Matty's anxieties
by naming my suspicions, especially as Fanny said to me, the next
day, that it was such a queer kitchen for having odd shadows about
it, she really was almost afraid to stay; "for you know, miss," she
added, "I don't see a creature from six o'clock tea, till Missus
rings the bell for prayers at ten."

However, it so fell out that Fanny had to leave and Miss Matilda
begged me to stay and "settle her" with the new maid; to which I
consented, after I had heard from my father that he did not want me
at home. The new servant was a rough, honest-looking, country
girl, who had only lived in a farm place before; but I liked her