I must tell you
that the day previously I had given her a practical lesson in
black-leading a stove by doing it myself while she looked on. Well,
after an hour in the kitchen I returned to see how she was getting on,
when I found to my great pleasure that not content with scrubbing the
floor, she had also attacked the stove with hot water, soap, and
scrubbing brush, with the result that my hard work of the previous day
was all undone and the whole room well sprinkled with black specks and
the stove a mass of rust. Two weeks of similar experiences finished our
acquaintance, and she gave place to No. 6. After I had spent three weeks
teaching No. 6 cooking, she quietly informed me that she was leaving at
the end of the week to take up a place as cook in Rosario, as she now
knew enough cooking for the position; so I had not only wasted all my
time in teaching her, but had paid her into the bargain for learning
enough to leave me.
The next servant, No. 7, Alexandrina, was, I think, the worst. She was a
Spaniard from Barcelona. She was an awful individual, and would insist
on wearing clothes of so light and scanty a nature that she was not
decent to have about the house; also, whenever we happened to have a
joke of any sort to laugh over at meals, she used immediately to come in
from the kitchen to see what was going on, and I had the greatest
difficulty to get her to return to the kitchen.
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