He certainly had to pay excessive interest on that investment, for if ever a mild man was nagged, or if ever a patient man had his temper tried, it was Uncle Stanwood. By my tenth birthday the house walls were no longer echoing with peace, for there were daily tirades of wrath and anger about the table. These family rows took many curious turns. In them my aunt, well read in Dickens, whose writings were very real and vivid to her, freely drew from that fiction master’s gallery of types, and fitted them to uncle’s character. “Don’t sit there a-rubbin’ your slimy hands like Uriah Heep!” she would exclaim; or, “Yes, there you go, always and ever a-sayin’ that something’s bound to turn up, you old Micawber, you!” But this literary tailoring was not at all one-sided, for uncle was even better read than his wife, and with great effect he could say, “Yes, there you go, always insinuatin’ everlastingly, like Becky Sharp,” and the drive was superlatively effective in that uncle well knew that Thackeray’s book was aunt’s favorite. I heard him one day compare his wife to Mrs. Gamp, loving her nip of ale overmuch, and on another occasion she was actually included among Mrs. Jarley’s wax-works! There was a curious streak of benevolence in my aunt’s nature, a benevolence that concerned itself more with strangers than with those in her own home. I have seen her take broths and meats to neighbors, when uncle and I have had too much buttered bread and preserves. I have seen her take her apron with her to a neighbor’s, where she washed the dishes, while her own had to accumulate, to be later disposed of with my assistance. There was a shiftless man in the town, the town-crier, who would never take charity outright. Him did aunt persuade to come and paint rural scenes, highly colored with glaring tints, as if nature had turned color-blind. There were cows in every scene, and aunt noticed that all the cows were up to their knees in water. Not one stood clear on the vivid green hills. “Torvey,” she remarked to the old man, “why do you always put the cows in water?” The old artist responded, “It’s this way, Mrs. Brindin, you see, ma’am, I never learnt to paint ’oofs!” As a further benevolence towards this same man, she kept on hand a worn-out clock, for him to earn a penny on. After each tinkering the clock was never known to run more than a few minutes after the old man had left. But aunt only laughed over it, and called Torvey “summat of a codger, to be sure!” I attended a low brick schoolhouse which in spring and summer time was buried in a mass of shade, with only the tile chimneys free from a coat of ivy. The headmaster gave us brief holidays, when he had us run races for nuts. In addition to the usual studies I was taught darning, crocheting, plain sewing, and knitting. Every Monday morning I had to take my penny for tuition.