r fixed day for a periodical
tea-drinking with her, to which the child looks forward as the greatest
treat of its existence. She seldom visits at a greater distance than the
next door but one on either side; and when she drinks tea here, Sarah
runs out first and knocks a double-knock, to prevent the possibility of
her 'Missis's' catching cold by having to wait at the door. She is very
scrupulous in returning these little invitations, and when she asks Mr.
and Mrs. So-and-so, to meet Mr. and Mrs. Somebody-else, Sarah and she
dust the urn, and the best china tea-service, and the Pope Joan board;
and the visitors are received in the drawing-room in great state. She
has but few relations, and they are scattered about in different parts of
the country, and she seldom sees them. She has a son in India, whom she
always describes to you as a fine, handsome fellow--so like the profile
of his poor dear father over the sideboard, but the old lady adds, with a
mournful shake of the head, that he has always been one of her greatest
trials; and that indeed he once almost broke her heart; but it pleased
God to enable her to get the better of it, and she would prefer your
never mentioning the subject to her again. She has a great number of
pensioners: and on Saturday, after she comes back from market, there is a
regular levee of old men and women in the passage, waiting for their
weekly gratuity. Her name always heads the list of any benevolent
subscriptions, and hers are always the most liberal donations to the
Winter Coal and Soup Distribution Society. She subscribed twenty pounds
towards the erection of an organ in our parish church, and was so
overcome the first Sunday the children sang to it, that she was obliged
to be carried out by the pew-opener. Her entrance into church on Sunday
is always the signal for a little bustle in the side aisle, occasioned by
a general rise among the poor people, who bow and curtsey until the
pew-opener has ushered the old lady into her accustomed seat, dropped a
respectful curtsey, and shut the door: and the same ceremony is repeated
on her leaving church, when she walks home with the family next door but
one, and talks about the sermon all the way, invariably opening the
conversation by asking the youngest boy where the text was.

Thus, with the annual variation of a trip to some quiet place on the
sea-coast, passes the old lady's life. It has rolled on in the same
unvarying and benevolent