The Trail of the Serpent by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

THE post of kitchenmaid in the household of the Count de Marolles is no unimportant one, and Mrs. Moper is accounted a person of some consequence in the servants' hall. The French _chef_, who has his private sitting-room, wherein he works elaborate and scientific culinary combinations, which, when he condescends to talk English, he designates "plates," has of course very little communication with the household. Mrs. Moper is his prime minister; he gives his orders to her for execution, and throws himself back in his easy-chair to _think out_ a dish, while his handmaiden collects for him the vulgar elements of his noble art. Mrs. Moper is a very good cook herself; and when she leaves the Count de Marolles she will go into a family where there is no foreigner kept, and will have forty pounds per annum and a still-room of her own. She is in the caterpillar stage now, Mrs. Sarah Moper, and is content to write herself down kitchenmaid _ad interim_.

The servants'-hall dinner and the housekeeper's repast are both over; but the preparations for _the_ dinner have not yet begun, and Mrs. Moper and Liza, the scullerymaid, snatch half an hour's calm before the coming storm, and sit down to darn stockings, --