Mrs. Vesey SAT through life. Sat in the house, early and late;
sat in the garden; sat in unexpected window-seats in passages; sat
(on a camp-stool) when her friends tried to take her out walking;
sat before she looked at anything, before she talked of anything,
before she answered Yes, or No, to the commonest question--always
with the same serene smile on her lips, the same vacantly-
attentive turn of the head, the same snugly-comfortable position
of her hands and arms, under every possible change of domestic
circumstances. A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and
harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that
she had been actually alive since the hour of her birth. Nature
has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such
a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be
now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the
different processes that she is carrying on at the same time.
Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private
persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs.
Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences
of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.

"Now, Mrs. Vesey," said Miss Halcombe, looking brighter, sharper,
and readier than ever, by contrast with the undemonstrative old
lady at her side, "what will you have? A cutlet?"

Mrs. Vesey crossed her dimpled hands on the edge of the table,
smiled placidly, and said, "Yes, dear."

"What is that opposite Mr. Hartright? Boiled chicken, is it not? I
thought you liked boiled chicken better than cutlet, Mrs. Vesey?"