Such and the like shrewd axioms served the widow Puddephatt at least as well as marriage lines; and, if more were needed, her mastery of the exact science of nagging and of the conquering resource of hysterics supplied it. Sometimes, it was whispered, she was to be seen in her front garden viciously dusting a man’s coat with a stick; and on this moral implication alone, late tavern roysterers, lurching home after closing-time past the little wicket where she was often to be seen watching spectral and ironic, had been known to slink by, meanly conscious of deserting, and surrendering into her gloating hands a purely imaginary Puddephatt, their late boon companion. This tremendous lady undertook the care of us with infinite condescension, and, hearing that we were Londoners bred, gathered us at once under the protection of her maternal and metropolitan wing. “Lork, Fancy-Maria!” she would say, with an air of amused tolerance towards the little Suffolk rawbones who “generalled” for her; “we don’t breathe on the knives and polish ’em in our haprons in _London_!” Or, “That won’t do, Fancy-Maria! We know better in London than to dust the ’ot plates with our helbers.” With this shibboleth of sarcastic comparison, she had won, not only Fancy-Maria, but all feminine Dunberry to a perspiring emulation of her gentility, so that in the course of her two years the social code had grown quite elevated, and it was no longer fashionable to dine in one’s shirt-sleeves. Fancy-Maria was her adoring, but unable lieutenant. She tried hard, and breathed _very_ hard; yet her fervour led to frequent disaster. It was the management of trays that tested her most severely. If she rose with one from the depths, she invariably struck it against the lintel of the parlour door, and shot everything from it into the hall. If she descended with one from the heights, she tripped at the corner where the stairs turned, and tobogganed down on it the rest of the way, preceded by an avalanche of cups and dishes. She always did her best to keep the contents steady with her thumbs; but her thumbs, though large, were not universal, and were generally occupied in holding secure the bread and butter, for choice, on one side, and the fried fish on the other. Some people make a point of leaving a little piece on each dish “for manners.” We always cut out and left Fancy-Maria’s thumb-marks for that mysterious retainer of our childhood. It was not long before Uncle Jenico questioned Mrs. Puddephatt about the earthquake. She turned up her nose at the first mention of it, and tittered the shrillest sarcasm. “Lork, sir!” she said, “you’ve never abin took hin by that stuff! _And_ you a Londoner!” “Stuff, is it?” said Uncle Jenico, genially. “And why, now?” She cocked her head and folded her arms across her chest, like a tricksy saint in an old woodcut. “I wouldn’t a’ believed it of you,” she said; “no, not if you’d gone and took me by the ears and battered my ’ed on the table.”