of her gait and manner, would have superseded any face in the
world. To say that she had two left legs, and somebody else's
arms, and that all four limbs seemed to be out of joint, and to
start from perfectly wrong places when they were set in motion, is
to offer the mildest outline of the reality. To say that she was
perfectly content and satisfied with these arrangements, and
regarded them as being no business of hers, and that she took her
arms and legs as they came, and allowed them to dispose of
themselves just as it happened, is to render faint justice to her
equanimity. Her dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes,
that never wanted to go where her feet went; blue stockings; a
printed gown of many colours, and the most hideous pattern
procurable for money; and a white apron. She always wore short
sleeves, and always had, by some accident, grazed elbows, in which
she took so lively an interest, that she was continually trying to
turn them round and get impossible views of them. In general, a
little cap placed somewhere on her head; though it was rarely to be
met with in the place usually occupied in other subjects, by that
article of dress; but, from head to foot she was scrupulously
clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed, her
laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as
well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling
evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of
wooden handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk),
and wrestle as it were with her garments, until they fell into a
symmetrical arrangement.

Such, in outward form and garb, was Clemency Newcome; who was
supposed to have unconsciously originated a corruption of her own
Christian name, from Clementina (but nobody knew, for the deaf old