n, suggesting ever
more delightsome dishes and delicate desserts. He would warn her against
undesirable inmates and intractable servants, and would inspire her
tradesmen to serve her with the choicest comestibles and to temper
their bills to the unprotected widow. At night he would bless her lonely
pillow with peace, and would gently rouse her in the morning to a new
day of beneficences.

Mrs. Blodgett was about five feet four inches high, and may have weighed
twelve stone; into such limits were her virtues packed. She was perhaps
in the neighborhood of her fiftieth year; her dark hair was threaded
with honorable gray. Her countenance was rotund and ruddy; it was the
flower of kindness and hospitality in full bloom; but there was also
power in the thick eyebrows and in the massy substance of the chin--of
the chins, indeed, for here, as in other gifts, nature had been generous
with her. There was shrewdness and discernment in the good-nature of her
eyes; she knew human nature, although no one judged it with more charity
than she. Her old men were her brothers, her young men were her sons,
all children were her children. Solomon foresaw her in the most engaging
of his Proverbs. Her maid-servants arose at six in the morning and
called her blessed, for though her rule was strict it was just and
loving. She was at once the mistress and the friend of her household; no
Yankee captain so audacious that he ventured to oppose her law; no cynic
so cold as not to be melted by her tenderness. She was clad always in
black, with a white cap and ribbons, always spotless amid the grime of
Liverpool; in her more active moments--though she was always active--she
added a white apron to her attire. She was ever anywhere where she
was needed; she was never anywhere where she could be dispensed with.
Wherever she went she brought comfort and a cheerful but not restless
animation. Her boarders were busy men, but it was always with an effort
that they wrenched themselves from her breakfast-table, and they sat
down to dinner as one man. She made them happy, but she would not spoil
them. "You're a pretty young man!" she said, severely, to complacent
Mr. Crane, when, one morning, he came late to breakfast. "I always knew
that," returned he, reaching self-satisfiedly for the toast-rack. "Well,
I'm sure your glass never told you so!" was the withering retort. Mr.
Crane did not lift his neck so high after that. The grin that went round
the table was