If ever her attachment to her old protectors were disturbed by
fresher cares and hopes, it has long since resumed its former
current. It has filled the void in the poor creature's heart, and
replaced the love of kindred. Death has not left her alone, and
this, with a roof above her head, and a warm hearth to sit by,
makes her cheerful and contented. Does she remember the marriage
of great-grandmamma? Ay, that she does, as well--as if it was only
yesterday. You wouldn't think it to look at her now, and perhaps
she ought not to say so of herself, but she was as smart a young
girl then as you'd wish to see. She recollects she took a friend
of hers up-stairs to see Miss Emma dressed for church; her name
was--ah! she forgets the name, but she remembers that she was a
very pretty girl, and that she married not long afterwards, and
lived--it has quite passed out of her mind where she lived, but she
knows she had a bad husband who used her ill, and that she died in
Lambeth work-house. Dear, dear, in Lambeth workhouse!
And the old couple--have they no comfort or enjoyment of existence?
See them among their grandchildren and great-grandchildren; how
garrulous they are, how they compare one with another, and insist
on likenesses which no one else can see; how gently the old lady
lectures the girls on points of breeding and decorum, and points
the moral by anecdotes of herself in her young days--how the old
gentleman chuckles over boyish feats and roguish tricks, and tells
long stories of a 'barring-out' achieved at the school he went to:
which was very wrong, he tells the boys, and never to be imitated
of course, but which he cannot help letting them know was very
pleasant too--especially when he kissed the master's niece.
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