unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone through by
little babies; and so, after dessert, in orange season, Miss
Jenkyns and Miss Matty used to rise up, possess themselves each of
an orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own
rooms to indulge in sucking oranges.

I had once or twice tried, on such occasions, to prevail on Miss
Matty to stay, and had succeeded in her sister's lifetime. I held
up a screen, and did not look, and, as she said, she tried not to
make the noise very offensive; but now that she was left alone, she
seemed quite horrified when I begged her to remain with me in the
warm dining-parlour, and enjoy her orange as she liked best. And
so it was in everything. Miss Jenkyns's rules were made more
stringent than ever, because the framer of them was gone where
there could be no appeal. In all things else Miss Matilda was meek
and undecided to a fault. I have heard Fanny turn her round twenty
times in a morning about dinner, just as the little hussy chose;
and I sometimes fancied she worked on Miss Matilda's weakness in
order to bewilder her, and to make her feel more in the power of
her clever servant. I determined that I would not leave her till I
had seen what sort of a person Martha was; and, if I found her
trustworthy, I would tell her not to trouble her mistress with
every little decision.

Martha was blunt and plain-spoken to a fault; otherwise she was a
brisk, well-meaning, but very ignorant girl. She had not been with
us a week before Miss Matilda and I were astounded one morning by
the receipt of a letter from a cousin of hers, who had been twenty
or thirty years in India, and who had lately, as we had seen by the
"Army List," returned to England, bringing with him an invalid wife