ulness and
rapidity of execution that astonished all who heard her.

It had been observed in this good lady (who did not want for personal
attractions, being plump and buxom to look at, though like her
fair daughter, somewhat short in stature) that this uncertainty of
disposition strengthened and increased with her temporal prosperity; and
divers wise men and matrons, on friendly terms with the locksmith and
his family, even went so far as to assert, that a tumble down some
half-dozen rounds in the world's ladder--such as the breaking of the
bank in which her husband kept his money, or some little fall of that
kind--would be the making of her, and could hardly fail to render her
one of the most agreeable companions in existence. Whether they were
right or wrong in this conjecture, certain it is that minds, like
bodies, will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from
mere excess of comfort, and like them, are often successfully cured by
remedies in themselves very nauseous and unpalatable.

Mrs Varden's chief aider and abettor, and at the same time her principal
victim and object of wrath, was her single domestic servant, one Miss
Miggs; or as she was called, in conformity with those prejudices of
society which lop and top from poor hand-maidens all such genteel
excrescences--Miggs. This Miggs was a tall young lady, very much
addicted to pattens in private life; slender and shrewish, of a rather
uncomfortable figure, and though not absolutely ill-looking, of a sharp
and acid visage. As a general principle and abstract proposition, Miggs
held the male sex to be utterly contemptible and unworthy of notice;
to be fickle, false, base, sottish, inclined to perjury, and wholly
undeserving. When particularly exasperated against them (which, scandal
said, was when Sim Tappertit slighted her most) she was accustomed to
wish with great emphasis that the whole race of women could but die off,
in order that the men might be brought to know the real value of the
blessings by which they set so little store; nay, her feeling for her
order ran so high, that she sometimes declared, if she could only have
good security for a fair, round number--say ten thousand--of young
virgins following her example, she would, to spite mankind, hang, drown,
stab, or poison herself, with a joy past all expression.

It was the voice of Miggs that greeted the locksmith, when he knocked at
his own house, with a shrill cry of 'Who's there?'

'M