"There was some of them knew what I meant at once, for after they'd
scampered off I heard shouts up and down the stairs from one to the
other, 'Cook's going!' 'We shall have a new cook soon!' 'What a
lark we'll have with the toffey and the pies! We'll make her do just
as we choose!'

"'There, now,' thought I to myself, 'there'll be somebody else put
down to baste before long. Well, I'm glad my time's over.' And
thereupon I fell to wishing I was back again in father and mother's
ricketty old cottage, that I'd once been so proud to leave, to go and
live with gentlefolks. But, you see, it was no use wishing, for I'd
my bread to earn, and must turn out somewhere, let it be as
disagreeable as it would. Father and mother were dead, and there was
no ricketty cottage for me to go back to, so I wiped my eyes, and
told myself to make the best of what had to be.

"Well, dears," pursued Cooky, after a short pause, during which the
little ones looked far more inclined to cry than laugh, "Missus was
quite taken aback when she heard I wouldn't stay any longer.

"'Cook,' she said, 'I'm perfectly astonished at your want of sense in
not recognizing the value of such a situation as mine! and as to your
complaints about the children, anything more ridiculously
unreasonable I never heard! Such superior, well-taught young people,
you are not very likely to meet with again in a hurry!'

"'Perhaps not, ma'am,' says I, 'in French, and crochet, and the
piano, and Latin, and things I don't understand, being only a cook.
But I know what behaviour is, and that's what I'm sure the young
ladies and gentlemen have never been taught; or if they have, they're