The Major had no fixed residence, (he had to come up from Bath within the last few weeks, to be present at the opening of the Great Exhibition,) but continually floated about the country in the company of an old housekeeper, who knowing all his ways, and all his whims, had grown to be quite indispensable to him. Mrs. Coddle was the lady of a defunct twopenny-postman, and since the death of the respected twopenny, she had “took to nussing;” but not liking the dormitory accommodations usual in “the monthly line,” she had been only too glad to avail herself of the Major’s offer, after having attended him during a severe bilious fever, to continue in his service in the capacity of housekeeper. And so effectually had she performed her duties, and so necessary had she made herself to his comfort, during her short residence with him in that capacity, that—having a true sense of her value to him—she always made a point, when she could not get the Major to do just as she pleased, of threatening to leave him, saying she could see plainly she was not wanted, and that he could do well enough without her now; and adding, as she wiped her eyes with the corner of her white apron, that it might be a severe struggle for her to leave so kind a master as he’d always been to her, but, at least she’d have the satisfaction of knowing, when she was gone, that she wouldn’t be a wherreting on him then, no longer. Mrs. Coddle was a particularly clean-looking, motherly body. She wore the whitest of caps, with very deep borders, and the cleanest of aprons, while her cotton gowns were of the neatest of patterns; and though she was close upon sixty, her cheeks were almost as rosy as baking apples. To do her justice, she certainly was a mightily pleasant old dame to look at, and she was just one of those persons who, by saving a gentleman every kind of trouble in life, and seeing that he has not to make the least exertion to gratify a single want, manage to beget such a habit of indolence and dependence in those upon whom they attend, that their excess of servitude soon gets to assume the character of the greatest tyranny.