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 Matty 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 afterwards
by the church clock.
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