"When I first entered the church, she was on her knees in the aisle, flopping a very grimy piece of house flannel in and out of a zinc pail, containing what looked like an unpleasant compound of ink and soapsuds. Our acquaintance began by her exhorting me, in a very loud voice, to keep out of the 'pile.' The pail was the very last place into which one would desire to go. So, carefully keeping out of it, and avoiding the flops of the flannel, which landed each time in quite unexpected places, I fled up the church. A moment later, as I walked round the pulpit examining the panels, she popped up in it triumphant, waving a black rag, which I suppose did duty for a duster. Her sudden appearance, in the place where I was picturing you giving out your first text, made me jump nearly out of my skin. Whereupon she said: 'Garn!' and came chuckling down the steps, flapping her black rag on the balustrade. I hadn't a notion what 'garn' meant; but concluded it was cockney for 'go on,' and hurriedly went. "But it was no good dodging round pillars or taking circuitous routes down one aisle and up another, in attempts to avoid her. Wherever I went, she was there before me; always brandishing some fresh implement connected with the process which, in any other hands, might have been church cleaning. So at last I gave up trying to avoid her, and stood my ground bravely, in the hopes of gleaning information from her very remarkable conversation. I say 'bravely,' because she became much more terrifying when she talked. She held her left eye shut, with her left hand, put her face very close to mine, and looked at me out of the right eye. She didn't seem able to talk without looking at me; or to look at me, without holding one eye shut. "I was dining at the Brands' that evening, and happened to say to the man who took me in: 'Do you know how terrifying it is to talk to a person who holds one eye shut, and looks at you with the other?' He wanted to know what I meant; so I showed how my old lady had done it, with head pushed forward, and elbow well up. Everybody else went into fits; but my man turned out to be a rising oculist, and took it quite seriously; declared it must be a bad case of astigmatism; asked the name of the church, and is going off there to examine her eyes and prescribe glasses! "I tell you all this, in case she was a protégé of yours; for she remembers you, David.