Christmas stories, English; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
"I couldn't do anything, Doctor Jeddler, till the women had done getting
in the apples, could I?" said Britain, his voice rising with his
reasoning, so that it was very loud at last.
"Well, have they done now?" returned the Doctor, looking at his watch,
and clapping his hands. "Come! make haste! where's Clemency?"
"Here am I, Mister," said a voice from one of the ladders, which a pair
of clumsy feet descended briskly. "It's all done now. Clear away, gals.
Everything shall be ready for you in half a minute, Mister."
With that she began to bustle about most vigorously; presenting, as she
did so, an appearance sufficiently peculiar to justify a word of
introduction.
She was about thirty years old; and had a sufficiently plump and
cheerful face, though it was twisted up into an odd expression of
tightness that made it comical. But the extraordinary homeliness of her
gait and manner, would have superseded any face in the world. To say
that she had two left legs, and somebody else's arms; and that all four
limbs seemed to be out of joint, and to start from perfectly wrong
places when they were set in motion; is to offer the mildest outline of
the reality. To say that she was perfectly content and satisfied with
these arrangements, and regarded them as being no business of hers, and
took her arms and legs as they came, and allowed them to dispose of
themselves just as it happened, is to render faint justice to her
equanimity. Her dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes, that
never wanted to go where her feet went; blue stockings; a printed gown
of many colours, and the most hideous pattern procurable for money; and
a white apron. She always wore short sleeves, and always had, by some
accident, grazed elbows, in which she took so lively an interest that
she was continually trying to turn them round and get impossible views
of them. In general, a little cap perched somewhere on her head; though
it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other
subjects, by that article of dress; but from head to foot she was
scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed
her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as
well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling
evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden
handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle
as it were with her garments, until they fell into a symmetrical
arrangement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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