invitation--a reward and encouragement of virtue with especial reference
to my mother and Miss Fison, the maid. They sat about in black and
shiny and flouncey clothing adorned with gimp and beads, eating
great quantities of cake, drinking much tea in a stately manner and
reverberating remarks.

I remember these women as immense. No doubt they were of negotiable
size, but I was only a very little chap and they have assumed nightmare
proportions in my mind. They loomed, they bulged, they impended.
Mrs. Mackridge was large and dark; there was a marvel about her head,
inasmuch as she was bald. She wore a dignified cap, and in front of that
upon her brow, hair was PAINTED. I have never seen the like since. She
had been maid to the widow of Sir Roderick Blenderhasset Impey, some
sort of governor or such-like portent in the East Indies, and from her
remains--in Mrs. Mackridge--I judge Lady Impey was a very stupendous and
crushing creature indeed. Lady Impey had been of the Juno type, haughty,
unapproachable, given to irony and a caustic wit. Mrs. Mackridge had no
wit, but she had acquired the caustic voice and gestures along with the
old satins and trimmings of the great lady. When she told you it was a
fine morning, she seemed also to be telling you you were a fool and a
low fool to boot; when she was spoken to, she had a way of acknowledging
your poor tinkle of utterance with a voluminous, scornful "Haw!" that
made you want to burn her alive. She also had a way of saying "Indade!"
with a droop of the eyelids.

Mrs. Booch was a smaller woman, brown haired, with queer little curls on
either side of her face, large blue eyes and a small set of stereotyped
remarks that constituted her entire mental range. Mrs. Latude-Fernay has
left, oddly enough, no memory at all except her name and the effect of
a green-grey silk dress, all set with gold and blue buttons. I fancy she