I did not get used, either, to saying
"Papa," as I did "Mamma," for Grandmamma never seemed to care to hear
about him; I don't believe she liked him. She never seemed to want to
hear about anything at Brocklebank. I don't think she ever took even to
the girls, except Fanny. They all came to see me in turns, but
Grandmamma said Sophy was only fit to be a country parson's wife; she
knew nothing except things about the house and sewing and mending: she
said fine breeding would be thrown away upon her. She might do very
well, Grandmamma said, with her snuff-box elegantly held in her left
hand, and taking a pinch out of it with the mittened fingers of her
right--that is, Grandmamma, not Sophy--she said Sophy might do very well
for a country squire's eldest daughter and some parson's wife, to cut
out clothes and roll pills and make dumplings, but that was all she was
good for. Then Hatty's pert speeches she could not bear one bit.
Grandmamma said it was perfectly dreadful, and that her great glazed red
cheeks--that is what she called them--were insufferably vulgar; she
wouldn't like anybody to hear that such a creature was her
grand-daughter. She wanted Hatty to take a lot of castor oil or some
such horrid stuff, to bring down her red cheeks and make her slender and
ladylike; she was ever so much too fat, Grandmamma said, and she thought
it so vulgar to be fat. She wanted to pinch her in with stays, too, but
it was all of no use. Hatty would not be pinched, and she would not
take castor oil, and she would eat and drink--like a plough-boy,
Grandmamma said--so at last she gave her up as a bad job. Then Fanny
came, and she is more like Grandmamma in her ways, and she did not mind
the castor oil, but swallowed bottles of it; and she did not mind the
stays, but let Grandmamma pinch her anyhow she pleased, so I think she
rather liked Fanny. I was pale and thin enough without castor oil, so
she did not give me any, for which I am thankful, for I could not have
swallowed it as meekly as Fanny.

It looked very queer to me, after Grandmamma's houseful of servants, to
come home and find only four at Brocklebank, and but three of those in
the house, and my Aunt Kezia doing half the work herself, and expecting
us girls to help her. Grandmamma would hardly let me pick up my
kerchief, if I dropped it; I had to call Willet, her woman, to give it
to me. And here, my Aunt Kezia looks as if she thought I ought to want
no telling h