She is doing very well as it is, and if the young man
succeeds, as I have little question that he will, I think it probable
enough that she will retire from her position as the head of a
boarding-house. We have all liked the good woman who have lived with
her,--I mean we three friends who have put ourselves on record. Her
talk, I must confess, is a little diffuse and not always absolutely
correct, according to the standard of the great Worcester; she is subject
to lachrymose cataclysms and semiconvulsive upheavals when she reverts in
memory to her past trials, and especially when she recalls the virtues of
her deceased spouse, who was, I suspect, an adjunct such as one finds not
rarely annexed to a capable matron in charge of an establishment like
hers; that is to say, an easy-going, harmless, fetch-and-carry,
carve-and-help, get-out-of-the-way kind of neuter, who comes up three
times (as they say drowning people do) every day, namely, at breakfast,
dinner, and tea, and disappears, submerged beneath the waves of life,
during the intervals of these events.
It is a source of genuine delight to me, who am of a kindly nature
enough, according to my own reckoning, to watch the good woman, and see
what looks of pride and affection she bestows upon her Benjamin, and how,
in spite of herself, the maternal feeling betrays its influence in her
dispensations of those delicacies which are the exceptional element in
our entertainments.
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