hoops were worn in those days, and long ruffles, and sacks short and
long, and stomachers, and hoods, and sundry other conceits, now never
thought of; but Mrs. Margaret thought that all these things had a
genteel appearance, and showed that those who bought them and those who
inherited them had not come of nothing.

Mrs. Margaret, however, never put any of these fine things on, till she
had performed her household duties, looked into every hole and corner in
the offices, overlooked the stores, visited the larder, scullery and
hen-yard, weighed what her three maids had spun the day before, skimmed
the milk with her own hands, gathered up the candle ends, and cut the
cabbage for the brose; all which being done, and the servants' dinner
seen to, and it must be confessed, it was seldom that they had a very
sumptuous regale, she dressed herself as a lady should be dressed, and
sate down to her darning, which was her principal work, in the oval
window in the chief room in the castle. Darning, we say, was her
principal work, because there was scarcely an article in the house which
she did not darn occasionally, from the floor-cloth to her own best
laces, and, as money was seldom forthcoming for renewing any of the
finer articles in the house capable of being darned, no one can say what
would have been the consequence, if Mrs. Margaret had been divested of
this darning propensity.

How the old lady subsisted herself is hardly known, for it often
happened that the dinner she contrived for her nephew, was barely
sufficient for him, and although on these occasions she always managed
to seem to be eating, yet had Mr. Dymock had his eyes about him, he
could not but have seen that she must often have risen from the table,
after having known little more than the odour of the viands. Nothing,
however, which has been said of Mrs. Margaret Dymock goes against that