and ere I had summoned the courage to open my eyes of a morning, her broom was lisping along the base-board of my hall. I knew when she was at the wash-tub, too, because, when thus employed, she invariably raised her voice in what I at first mistook for a dirge, but mentally unmasked, at length, as “Bonnie Dundee” in adagio time. If you have never heard it thus rendered, a simple experiment will enable you to bear me out in the assertion that of all airs it is the most lamentable. But never, up to that time, had I realized how much cleaner than merely clean it is possible for a window, or a floor, or a table-cloth to be. Never had I known what it was to have whatever I might chance to mislay or disarrange restored to its proper position, the instant my back was turned, as unerringly and inevitably as those cheerful, weighted dolls which spring upright, no matter how or where you happen to hurl them. My somewhat meagre supply of silver was, fortunately,
