her clothes herself, without being able to see very well. I suppose she
did not have much to dress on. I know she used to turn her dresses, and
change them around several times. When she had any money she used to
squander it, buying dresses for Scroggs's girls or for some one else.
She was always scrupulously neat, being quite old-maidish. She said that
cleanliness was next to godliness in a man, and in a woman it was on a
par with it. I remember once seeing a picture of her as a young girl, as
young as Kitty, dressed in a soft white dress, with her hair down over
her ears, and some flowers in her dress--that is, it was said to be she;
but I did not believe it. To be sure, the flowers looked like it. She
always would stick flowers or leaves in her dress, which was thought
quite ridiculous. The idea of associating flowers with an old maid!
It was as hard as believing she ever was the young girl. It was not,
however, her dress, old and often queer and ill-made as it used to be,
that was the chief grievance against her. There was a much stronger
ground of complaint; she had NERVES! The word used to be strung out
in pronouncing it, with a curve of the lips, as "ner-erves". I don't
remember that she herself ever mentioned them; that was the exasperating
part of it. She would never say a word; she would just close her thin
lips tight, and wear a sort of ill look, as if she were in actual pain.
She used to go up-stairs, and shut the door and windows tight, and go to
bed, and have mustard-plasters on her temples and the back of her neck;
and when she came down, after a day or two, she would have bright red
spots burnt on her temples and neck, and would look ill. Of course it
was very hard not to be exasperated at this. Then she would creep about
as if merely stepping jarred her; would put on a heavy blue veil, and
wrap her head up in a shawl, and feel along by the chairs till she got
to a seat, and drop back in it, gasping. Why, I have even seen her sit
in the room, all swathed up, and with an old parasol over her head to
keep out the light, or some such nonsense, as we used to think. It was
too ridiculous to us, and we boys used to walk heavily and stumble over
chairs--"accidentally", of course--just to make her jump. Sometimes she
would even start up and cry out. We had the incontestable proof that
it was all "put on"; for if you began to talk to her, and got her
interested, she would forget all about her ailments, and would run