by an
ample mohair frisette of glossy blackness woven on each side into a heap
of stiff little curls, which pushed up her cap border in rather a
bristling and decisive way. In all her movements and personal habits,
even to her tone of voice and manner of speaking, Miss Roxy was
vigorous, spicy, and decided. Her mind on all subjects was made up, and
she spoke generally as one having authority; and who should, if she
should not? Was she not a sort of priestess and sibyl in all the most
awful straits and mysteries of life? How many births, and weddings, and
deaths had come and gone under her jurisdiction! And amid weeping or
rejoicing, was not Miss Roxy still the master-spirit,--consulted,
referred to by all?--was not her word law and precedent? Her younger
sister, Miss Ruey, a pliant, cozy, easy-to-be-entreated personage, plump
and cushiony, revolved around her as a humble satellite. Miss Roxy
looked on Miss Ruey as quite a frisky young thing, though under her
ample frisette of carroty hair her head might be seen white with the
same snow that had powdered that of her sister. Aunt Ruey had a face
much resembling the kind of one you may see, reader, by looking at
yourself in the convex side of a silver milk-pitcher. If you try the
experiment, this description will need no further amplification.

The two almost always went together, for the variety of talent comprised
in their stock could always find employment in the varying wants of a
family. While one nursed the sick, the other made clothes for the well;
and thus they were always chippering and chatting to each other, like a
pair of antiquated house-sparrows, retailing over harmless gossips, and
moralizing in that gentle jogtrot which befits serious old women. In
fact, they had talked over everything in Nature, and said everything
they could think of to each other so often, that the opinions of one
were as like those of the other as two sides of a pea-pod. But as often
happens in cases of the sort, this was not because the two were in all
respects exactly alike, but because the stronger one had mesmerized the
weaker into consent.

Miss Roxy was the master-spirit of the two, and, like the great coining
machine of a mint, came down with her own sharp, heavy stamp on every
opinion her sister put out. She was matter-of-fact, positive, and
declarative to the highest degree, while her sister was naturally
inclined to the elegiac and the pathetic, indulging herself in
sentimen