 himself. »There's a girl who might
be lost and ruined, if she wasn't among practical people. Mother and I know,
solely from being practical, that there are times when that girl's whole nature
seems to roughen itself against seeing us so bound up in Pet. No father and
mother were bound up in her, poor soul. I don't like to think of the way in
which that unfortunate child, with all that passion and protest in her, feels
when she hears the Fifth Commandment on a Sunday. I am always inclined to call
out, Church, Count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.«
    Besides his dumb-waiter, Mr. Meagles had two other not dumb waiters, in the
persons of two parlour-maids, with rosy faces and bright eyes, who were a highly
ornamental part of the table decoration. »And why not, you see?« said Mr.
Meagles on this head. »As I always say to Mother, why not have something pretty
to look at, if you have anything at all?«
    A certain Mrs. Tickit, who was Cook and Housekeeper when the family were at
home, and Housekeeper only when the family were away, completed the
establishment. Mr. Meagles regretted that the nature of the duties in which she
was engaged, rendered Mrs. Tickit unpresentable at present, but hoped to
introduce her to the new visitor to-morrow. She was an important part of the
cottage, he said, and all his friends knew her. That was her picture up in the
corner. When they went away, she always put on the silk-gown and the jet-black
row of curls represented in that portrait (her hair was reddish-grey in the
kitchen), established herself in the breakfast-room, put her spectacles between
two particular leaves of Doctor Buchan's Domestic Medicine, and sat looking over
the blind all day until they came back again. It was supposed that no persuasion
could be invented which would induce Mrs. Tickit to abandon her post at the
blind, however long their absence, or to dispense with the attendance of Dr.
Buchan: the lucubrations of which learned practitioner, Mr. Meagles implicitly
believed she had never yet consulted to the extent of one word in her life.
    In the evening, they played an old-fashioned rubber; and Pet sat looking
over her father's hand, or singing to herself by fits and starts at the piano.
She was a spoilt child; but how could she be otherwise? Who could be much
