made beforehand, besides cakes and biscuits, tarts and pies;
everything to save trouble. But it was not of much use, for,
alleging that they were working so hard, the young men, F--- at
their head, though I was always telling him he was married and ought
to know better, set to work and ate up everything immediately, as
completely as if they had been locusts. And then, they were all so
dreadfully wild and unmanageable! Mine was by far the hardest task
of all, the keeping them in any sort of order. For instance,
Captain George declared one day, that if there was one thing he did
better than another, it was to make jam. Consequently a fatigue
party was ordered out to gather strawberries, and, after more than
half had been eaten on the way to the house, a stewpan was filled.
I had to do most of the skimming, as Captain George wanted to
practice a duet with Miss A---. I may as well mention here that we
never had any opportunity of seeing how the jam kept, because the
smell pervaded the whole house to such an extent, that, declaring
they felt like schoolboys again, the gentlemen fell on my half dozen
pots of preserves in a body, carried them off, and ate them all up
then and there, announcing afterwards, there had just been a pot
a-piece.

It was really a dreadful time, although we got well cooked _plats_,
for Captain George wasted quite as much as he used. The pigs fed
sumptuously that week on his failures, in sauces, minces; puddings,
and what not. He had insisted on our making him a paper cap and a
linen apron, or rather a dozen linen aprons, for he was perpetually
blackening his apron and casting it aside. Then, he used suddenly
to cease to take any interest in his occupation, and, seating
himself sideways on the kitchen dresser, begin to whistle through a
whole opera, or repeat pages of poetry. I tried the experiment of