of servants was a standing grievance, and I could not wonder
much at it; for if gentlemen were scarce, and almost unheard of in the
"genteel society" of Cranford, they or their counterparts--handsome young
men--abounded in the lower classes. The pretty, neat servant-maids had
their choice of desirable "followers;" and their mistresses, without
having the sort of mysterious dread of men and matrimony that Miss Matilda
had, might well feel a little anxious, lest the heads of their comely
maids should be turned by the joiner, or the butcher, or the gardener; who
were obliged by their callings, to come to the house; and who, as ill-luck
would have it, were generally handsome and unmarried. Fanny's lovers, if
she had any--and Miss Matilda suspected her of so many flirtations, that,
if she had not been very pretty, I should have doubted her having one--were
a constant anxiety to her mistress. She was forbidden, by the articles of
her engagement, to have "followers;" and though she had answered
innocently enough, doubling up the hem of her apron as she spoke, "Please,
ma'am, I never had more than one at a time," Miss Matey prohibited that
one. But a vision of a man seemed to haunt the kitchen. Fanny assured me
that it was all fancy; or else I should have said myself that I had seen a
man's coat-tails whisk into the scullery once, when I went on an errand
into the store-room at night; and another evening when, our watches having
stopped, I went to look at the clock, there was a very odd appearance,
singularly like a young man squeezed up between the clock and the back of
the open kitchen-door; and I thought Fanny snatched up the candle very
hastily, so as to throw the shadow on the clock-face, while she very
positively told me the time half-an-hour too early, as we found out
afterward by the church-clock. But I did not add to Miss Matey's anxieties
by naming my suspicions, especially as Fanny said to me, the next day,
that it was such a queer kitchen for having odd shadows about it, she
really was almost afraid to stay; "for you know, Miss," she added, "I
don't see a creature from six o'clock tea, till missus rings the bell for
prayers at ten."

However, it so fell out that Fanny had to leave; and Miss Matilda begged
me to stay and "settle her" with the new maid; to which I consented, after
I had heard from my father that he did not want me at home. The new
servant was a rough, honest-looking country-girl, who had only lived in