Both Thomas and Pompanita take a deep interest in all household affairs,
although in this respect they do not begin to show the curiosity of the
Pretty Lady. Never a piece of furniture was changed in he house that she
did not immediately notice, the first time she came into the room
afterward; and she invariably jumped up on the article and thoroughly
investigated affairs before settling down again. Every parcel that came
in must be examined, and afterward she must lie on the paper or inside
the box that it came in, always doing this with great solemnity and
gazing earnestly out of her large, intelligent dark eyes. Toward the
close of her life she was greatly troubled at any unusual stir in the
household. She liked to have company, but nothing disturbed her more
than to have a man working in the cellar, putting in coal, cutting wood,
or doing such work. She used then to follow us uneasily about and look
earnestly up into our faces, as if to say:--

"Girls, this is not right. Everything is all upset here and 'a' the
world's gang agley.' Why don't you fix it?"

She was the politest creature, too. That was the reason of her name. In
her youth she was christened "Pansy"; then "Cleopatra," "Susan," "Lady
Jane Grey" and the "Duchess." But her manners were so punctiliously
perfect, and she was such a "pretty lady" always and everywhere;
moreover she had such a habit of sitting with her hands folded politely
across her gentle, lace-vandyked bosom that the only sobriquet that ever
clung was the one that expressed herself the most perfectly. She was in
every sense a "Pretty Lady." For years she ate with us at the table. Her
chair was placed next to mine, and no matter where she was or how
soundly she had been sleeping, when the dinner bell rang she was the
first to get to her seat. Then she sat patiently until I fixed a dainty
meal in a saucer and placed it in the chair beside her, when she ate it