adame de
Vandaleur fancied herself in her old home, "with all her finery about
her," as Nurse Brown used to say.

Nurse Brown seems to have had very little sympathy with nervous
diseases. She could understand a broken leg, or a fever, "when folks
kept their beds"; but the disordered fancies of a brain tried just too
far, the mad whims of a lady who could "go about," and who insisted upon
going about, and changing her dress two or three times a day, and
receiving imaginary visitors, and ordering her faithful nurse up and
down under the names of half-a-dozen servants she no longer possessed,
were beyond her comprehension.

Aunt Theresa said that she and her brothers and sisters had the deepest
pity for the poor lady. They thought it so romantic that she should cry
for fresh flowers and dress herself to meet the Queen in a dirty little
lodging at the back of Leicester Square, and they were always begging to
hear "what else she did." But Nurse Brown seems to have been fondest of
relating the smart speeches in which she endeavoured to "put sense into"
the devoted French servant who toiled to humour every whim of her
unhappy mistress, instead of being "sharp with her," as Nurse Brown
advised. Aunt Theresa had some doubts whether Mrs. Brown ever did make
the speeches she reported; but when people say they said this or that,
they often only mean that this or that is what they wish they had said.

"If she's mad, I says, shave her head, instead of dressing her hair all
day long. I've knowed mad people as foamed at the mouth and rolled their
eyes, and would have done themselves a injury but for a strait-jacket;
and I've knowed folks in fevers unreasonable enough, but they kept their
beds in a dark room, and didn't know their own mothers. Madame's ways is
beyond me, I says. _You_ calls it madness: _I_ calls it temper.
Tem--per, and no--thing else."

Aunt Theresa used to make us laugh by repeating Nurse Brown's sayings,
and the little shake of herself with which she emphasized the last
sentence.

If she had no sympathy for Madame de Vandaleur, she had a double share
for the poor lady's husband: "a _good_ soul," as she used to call him.
It was in vain that Jeanette spoke of the sweet temper and
unselfishness of her mistress "before these terrible days"; her conduct
towards her husband then was "enough for" Nurse Brown, so she said. No
sooner had the poor gentleman gone off on some errand for her pleasure
than she called for him