or for some one else. She was always scrupulously neat,
being quite old-maidish. She said that cleanliness was next to godliness
in a man, and in a woman it was on a par with it. I remember once
seeing a picture of her as a young girl, as young as Kitty,
dressed in a soft white dress, with her hair down over her ears,
and some flowers in her dress -- that is, it was said to be she;
but I did not believe it. To be sure, the flowers looked like it.
She always would stick flowers or leaves in her dress, which was thought
quite ridiculous. The idea of associating flowers with an old maid!
It was as hard as believing she ever was the young girl. It was not,
however, her dress, old and often queer and ill-made as it used to be,
that was the chief grievance against her. There was a much stronger ground
of complaint; she had NERVES! The word used to be strung out
in pronouncing it, with a curve of the lips, as "ner-erves".
I don't remember that she herself ever mentioned them;
that was the exasperating part of it. She would never say a word;
she would just close her thin lips tight, and wear a sort of ill look,
as if she were in actual pain. She used to go up-stairs, and shut the door
and windows tight, and go to bed, and have mustard-plasters on her temples
and the back of her neck; and when she came down, after a day or two,
she would have bright red spots burnt on her temples and neck,
and would look ill. Of course it was very hard not to be exasperated at this.
Then she would creep about as if merely stepping jarred her;
would put on a heavy blue veil, and wrap her head up in a shawl,
and feel along by the chairs till she got to a seat, and drop back in it,
gasping. Why, I have even seen her sit in the room, all swathed up,
and with an old parasol over her head to keep out the light,
or some such nonsense, as we used to think. It was too ridiculous to us,
and we boys used to walk heavily and stumble over chairs -- "accidentally",
of course -- just to make her jump. Sometimes she would even start up