A prim, pleasant old dame, proud of her great age, and of her bright silver hair, smoothed in bands beneath her quaint old widow's cap; sitting or standing, ever with her arms crossed over her black corded-silk apron, while a mitten-covered hand clasped each elbow. A prim, pleasant-looking old dame, always dressed in lavender poplin, whose stiff plaits seemed to have been carved out of the solid, as she stood at the window watching for the coming of her boy. For "Arty" always had been, and doubtless always would be, a boy in her pleasant old eyes--eyes that spoke the truth of her tender old heart; though there was one point upon which Aunt Fanny would err, and that was her age. Unlike ladies of a certain time of life, she was proud of her years, and, doubtless from some haziness in her arithmetic, she was given to adding to them, so that more than once in her arguments respecting points of time, she somewhat upset her calculations. "Why, aunt," the curate would say, "you cannot be so old as you say by eight years." "Nonsense, my dear boy, how can you know anything about it? I'm eighty-two." "Then," he would say loudly, "you must have been thirty when you were married." "Nonsense, child; how can you be so silly! And you need not shout so. I was twenty-two when your poor uncle led me to the altar." And then she would fall to smoothing her black apron, and arranging the folds of her dress, with hands that trembled in an agitated manner, a tear standing in one of the still bright eyes, as the old recollections sprang up, when, ceasing the discussion, her nephew would tenderly kiss her hand, and sit affectionately gazing in her handsome old face. Indeed time had paid a certain respect to Aunt Fanny, so that she looked years younger than she really was, while all her faculties save one were bright as ever; for proud though she was of the fine stitching placed with her own needle round Arty's shirt-fronts--stitching aided by no spectacles--and ignorant though she was of her failing, yet Aunt Fanny was terribly deaf. But she hardly felt the affliction, speaking of it as a slight weakness which affected her when she had a cold, always remaining unconscious that what she looked upon as a whisper was a conversation carried on in a loud key. Poor Aunt Fanny could not hear very well from her pew in the gallery, right in front of the organ, for the thing would make, she said, such a terrible buzzing sound; so a seat was provided for her just beneath the pulpit, which she found necessary, for clergymen were not what they used to be. On the following Sunday, her nephew had ascended to his place, spread out the black-velvet case she had made for his sermons, prayed, and given out his text twice, when, before the first words of the sermon were uttered, Aunt Fanny began to mutter to herself, though her muttering was so loud that everyone present in the little church must have heard it, her nephew himself being overwhelmed with confusion.