for her life, or you will find her on a table with nails in her
mouth, and anon she has to be chased from the garret (she has
suddenly decided to change her curtains), or she is under the bed
searching for band-boxes and asking sternly where we have put that
bonnet. On the whole she is behaving in a most exemplary way to-
day (not once have we caught her trying to go out into the washing-
house), and we compliment her at dinner-time, partly because she
deserves it, and partly to make her think herself so good that she
will eat something, just to maintain her new character. I question
whether one hour of all her life was given to thoughts of food; in
her great days to eat seemed to her to be waste of time, and
afterwards she only ate to boast of it, as something she had done
to please us. She seldom remembered whether she had dined, but
always presumed she had, and while she was telling me in all good
faith what the meal consisted of, it might be brought in. When in
London I had to hear daily what she was eating, and perhaps she had
refused all dishes until they produced the pen and ink. These were
flourished before her, and then she would say with a sigh, 'Tell
him I am to eat an egg.' But they were not so easily deceived;
they waited, pen in hand, until the egg was eaten.

She never 'went for a walk' in her life. Many long trudges she had
as a girl when she carried her father's dinner in a flagon to the
country place where he was at work, but to walk with no end save
the good of your health seemed a very droll proceeding to her. In
her young days, she was positive, no one had ever gone for a walk,
and she never lost the belief that it was an absurdity introduced
by a new generation with too much time on their hands. That they
enjoyed it she could not believe; it was merely a form of showing
off, and as they passed her window she would remark to herself with