anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping remnant. "Now
then, pass along, you girls, pass along," they would say, in that
irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've had your chance.
Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with this 'ere
demonstration of the unloved. Pass along."

In connection with this same barracks, our char-woman told Amenda, who
told Ethelbertha, who told me a story, which I now told the boys.

Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood, there
moved one day a certain family. Their servant had left them--most of
their servants did at the end of a week--and the day after the moving-in
an advertisement for a domestic was drawn up and sent to the _Chronicle_.
It ran thus:

WANTED, GENERAL SERVANT, in small family of eleven. Wages, 6 pounds;
no beer money. Must be early riser and hard worker. Washing done at
home. Must be good cook, and not object to window-cleaning. Unitarian
preferred.--Apply, with references, to A. B., etc.

That advertisement was sent off on Wednesday afternoon. At seven o'clock
on Thursday morning the whole family were awakened by continuous ringing
of the street-door bell. The husband, looking out of window, was
surprised to see a crowd of about fifty girls surrounding the house. He
slipped on his dressing-gown and went down to see what was the matter.
The moment he opened the door, fifteen of them charged tumultuously into
the passage, sweeping him completely off his legs. Once inside, these
fifteen faced round, fought the other thirty-five or so back on to the
doorstep, and slammed the door in their faces. Then they picked up the
master of the house, and asked him politely to conduct them to "A. B."

At first, owing to the clamour of the mob outside, who were hammering at
the door and shouting curses through the keyhole, he could understand
nothing, but at length they succeeded in explaining to him that they were
domestic servants come ill answer to his wife's advertisement. The man
went and told his wife, and his wife said she would see them, one at a
time.

Which one should have audience first was a delicate question to decide.
The man, on being appealed to, said he would prefer to leave it to them.
They accordingly discussed the matter among themselves. At the end of a
quarter of an hour, the victor, having borrowed some hair-pins and a
looking-glass from our char-woman, who had slept in th