Girls are your first trial after fixtures and they try you even worse
than what I call the Wandering Christians, though why _they_ should roam
the earth looking for bills and then coming in and viewing the apartments
and stickling about terms and never at all wanting them or dreaming of
taking them being already provided, is, a mystery I should be thankful to
have explained if by any miracle it could be. It's wonderful they live
so long and thrive so on it but I suppose the exercise makes it healthy,
knocking so much and going from house to house and up and down-stairs all
day, and then their pretending to be so particular and punctual is a most
astonishing thing, looking at their watches and saying "Could you give me
the refusal of the rooms till twenty minutes past eleven the day after to-
morrow in the forenoon, and supposing it to be considered essential by my
friend from the country could there be a small iron bedstead put in the
little room upon the stairs?" Why when I was new to it my dear I used to
consider before I promised and to make my mind anxious with calculations
and to get quite wearied out with disappointments, but now I says
"Certainly by all means" well knowing it's a Wandering Christian and I
shall hear no more about it, indeed by this time I know most of the
Wandering Christians by sight as well as they know me, it being the habit
of each individual revolving round London in that capacity to come back
about twice a year, and it's very remarkable that it runs in families and
the children grow up to it, but even were it otherwise I should no sooner
hear of the friend from the country which is a certain sign than I should
nod and say to myself You're a Wandering Christian, though whether they
are (as I _have_ heard) persons of small property with a taste for
regular employment and frequent change of scene I cannot undertake to
tell you.
Girls as I was beginning to remark are one of your first and your lasting
troubles, being like your teeth which begin with convulsions and never
cease tormenting you from the time you cut them till they cut you, and
then you don't want to part with them which seems hard but we must all
succumb or buy artificial, and even where you get a will nine times out
of ten you'll get a dirty face with it and naturally lodgers do not like
good society to be shown in with a smear of black across the nose or a
smudgy eyebrow. Where they pick the black up is a mystery I cannot
solve, as in the case of the willingest girl that ever came into a house
half-starved poor thing, a girl so willing that I called her Willing
Sophy down upon her knees scrubbing early and late and ever cheerful but
always smiling with a black face. And I says to Sophy, "Now Sophy my
good girl have a regular day for your stoves and keep the width of the
Airy between yourself and the blacking and do not brush your hair with
the bottoms of the saucepans and do not meddle with the snuffs of the
candles and it stands to reason that it can no longer be" yet there it
was and always on her nose, which turning up and being broad at the end
seemed to boast of it and caused warning from a steady gentleman and
excellent lodger with breakfast by the week but a little irritable and
use of a sitting-room when required, his words being "Mrs.
