THE RELATION THAT TOOK A LIKING TO ME. 77 



kissing her all day, that was out of the question once when I ar- 

 rived, and once when I should go home again, I felt to be sufficiently 

 satisfactory at least to me. I could not even take her a walking, 

 for she was like, perhaps, your own aunt, dear reader a fixture in 

 the parlour. 



The maid regularly planted her after breakfast in the chair ; if a 

 cold morning by the fire-side, like a clothes-horse ; or, if the sun 

 shone, over against the window, where, with one side of the Venetian 

 blind open, she would sit gazing on the garden till dusk, having an 

 old china bowl of soup brought for her nourishment in the middle of 

 the day, without subjecting herself to a removal. She always in- 

 sisted on being shifted as seldom as possible, for she was a thorough 

 household economist, and felt the truth of that apothegm of poor 

 Richard's, " three removes are as bad as a fire." I have known her 

 sit looking through the same pane of glass on the same grass-plot, as 

 patient as a hatching barn-door fowl, for nine hours without winking. 

 As for giving a formal description of her, I esteem it altogether un- 

 necessary. She was but one, of which a specimen may be found in 

 almost every standing family in the country. She was one of those 

 whose white crimped muslin cap fits close to their face, just beyond the 

 . forehead, like the fringe of a tart, with here and there a glimpse of 

 sable-silvered ghosts of curls peeping out by stealth. Her mouth was 

 an irregular, horizontal aperture, dipping at the ends ; the loins of 

 her nose thick, and her upper eye-lids like two pent-houses, with one 

 of her hands on the nob of her chair-arm, and the other cast care- 

 lessly into her ample lap, as if she had discarded the use of it 

 altogether. 



Such was the " relation that took a liking to me ;" it was a strange 

 phenomenon. I did not think she could like any thing under 

 heaven but her chair, her broth, and her ottoman. 



I have many times observed, however, amongst other things, how 

 her natural piety would break like momentary sunshine through the 

 habitual apathy of her existence. The rubbing of her spectacles was 

 as inevitable a forerunner of this, as knives and forks were of dinner. 

 She would spend one quarter of an hour in wiping the glasses, another 

 quarter in adjusting them to the exact point of sight, ring the bell for 

 Mary to bring the Bible with large type, con over and puzzle her 

 eyes with the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, not above five 

 minutes at most, and then either fall asleep and let the ponderous 

 volume fall upon her toes, or lay it aside at her elbow, shouting like 

 Stentor, " ay, my eyes get worser and worser, I shall be sand-blind 

 soon, as well as nut-deaf." Then she would pocket her spectacles 

 again, and fix her eyes on the window, setting the plants in the garden 

 just as a pointer sets game. 



Half my employment consisted in observing her ; but, at last, 

 owing to either the nature of the subject, or to the novelty being 

 worn off, I ceased to be moved by her little eccentricities, and grew 

 as sedate as an ancient Tom cat. I believe it was from that period 

 that my visage began to " cream and mantle like a standing pond," 

 to go into folds and overlappings, and concentric circles, and to be 

 here and there overgrown with a kind of duck-meat. 



