oreal frame was very large, excessively
fat, and remarkably unwieldy; being an appropriate casket in which to
enshrine a mind of the heaviest and most sluggish nature. She spoke
little, ate largely, and slept much--the latter recreation being very
frequently enjoyed in a large arm-chair of a peculiar kind. It had been
a water-butt, which her ingenious husband had cut half-way down the
middle, then half-way across, and in the angle thus formed fixed a
bottom, which, together with the back, he padded with tow, and covered
the whole with a mantle of glaring bed-curtain chintz, whose pattern
alternated in stripes of sky-blue and china roses, with broken fragments
of rainbow between. Notwithstanding her excessive slowness, however,
Mrs Grant was fond of taking a firm hold of anything or any
circumstance in the character or affairs of her friends, and twitting
them thereupon in a grave but persevering manner that was exceedingly
irritating. No one could ever ascertain whether Mrs Grant did this in
a sly way or not, as her visage never expressed anything except
unalterable good-humour. She was a good wife and an affectionate
mother, had a family of ten children, and could boast of never having
had more than one quarrel with her husband. This disagreement was
occasioned by a rather awkward mischance. One day, not long after her
last baby was born, Mrs Grant waddled towards her tub with the
intention of enjoying her accustomed siesta. A few minutes previously
her seventh child, which was just able to walk, had scrambled up into
the seat and fallen fast asleep there. As has been already said, Mrs
Grant's intellect was never very bright, and at this particular time she
was rather drowsy, so that she did not observe the child, and on
reaching her chair, turned round preparatory to letting herself plump
into it. She always _plumped_ into her chair. Her muscles were too
soft to lower her gently down into it. Invariably on reaching a certain
point they ceased to act, and let her down with a crash. She had just
reached this point, and her baby's hopes and prospects were on the eve
of being cruelly crushed for ever, when Mr Grant noticed the impending
calamity. He had no time to warn her, for she had already passed the
point at which her powers of muscular endurance terminated; so grasping
the chair, he suddenly withdrew it with such force that the baby rolled
off upon the floor like a hedgehog, straightened out flat, and ga