. Bridmain must feel the need of her
advice, to which he had been accustomed for three years, and that very
likely 'that woman' didn't make the poor man happy. In this amiable frame
of mind she wrote a very affectionate appeal, and addressed it to Mr.
Bridmain, through his banker.

Another mind that was being wrought up to a climax was Nanny's, the
maid-of-all-work, who had a warm heart and a still warmer temper. Nanny
adored her mistress: she had been heard to say, that she was 'ready to
kiss the ground as the missis trod on'; and Walter, she considered, was
_her_ baby, of whom she was as jealous as a lover. But she had, from the
first, very slight admiration for the Countess Czerlaski. That lady, from
Nanny's point of view, was a personage always 'drawed out i' fine
clothes', the chief result of whose existence was to cause additional
bed-making, carrying of hot water, laying of table-cloths, and cooking of
dinners. It was a perpetually heightening 'aggravation' to Nanny that she
and her mistress had to 'slave' more than ever, because there was this
fine lady in the house.

'An, she pays nothin' for't neither,' observed Nanny to Mr. Jacob Tomms,
a young gentleman in the tailoring line, who occasionally--simply out of
a taste for dialogue--looked into the vicarage kitchen of an evening. 'I
know the master's shorter o' money than iver, an' it meks no end o'
difference i' th' housekeepin'--her bein' here, besides bein' obliged to
have a charwoman constant.'

'There's fine stories i' the village about her,' said Mr. Tomms. 'They
say as Muster Barton's great wi' her, or else she'd niver stop here.'

'Then they say a passill o' lies, an' you ought to be ashamed to go an'
tell 'em o'er again. Do you think as the master, as has got a wife like
the missis, 'ud go running arter a stuck-up piece o' goods like that
Countess, as isn't fit to black the missis's shoes? I'm none so fond o'
the master, but I know better on him nor that.'

'Well, I didn't b'lieve it,' said Mr. Tomms, humbly.

'B'lieve it? you'd ha' been a ninny if yer did. An' she's a nasty, stingy
thing, that Countess. She's niver giv me a sixpence nor an old rag
neither, sin' here's she's been. A-lyin' a bed an a-comin' down to
breakfast when other folks wants their dinner!'

If such was the state of Nanny's mind as early as the end of August, when
this dialogue with Mr. Tomms occurred, you may imagine what it must have
been by the beginning of November, and t