Next morning, another set was ordered. This was not the first, second, or third time that my aunt's crockery had come to an untimely end. My aunt's maids had a rare place in her service. They had high life below stairs in perfection; people used to wonder that she did not see how she was imposed upon: bless her old heart! she never liked to see what she did not like to see--and so long as she could be quiet she was happy. She was a living emblem of the Pacific Ocean.
But my aunt Fidget was quite another thing. She only resembled my aunt Bridget in one particular; that is, she had not an ounce of lean about her; but then she had no fat neither--she was all skin and bone; I cannot say for a certainty, but I really believe, that she had no marrow in her bones: she was as light as a feather, as dry as a stick, and, had it not been for her pattens, she must have been blown away in windy weather. As for quiet, she knew not the meaning of the word: she was flying about from morning till night, like a fagot in fits, and finding fault with every body and every thing. Her tongue and her toes had no sinecures. Had she weighed as many pounds as my aunt Bridget weighed stones, she would have worn out half-a-dozen pair of shoes in a week. I don't believe that aunt Bridget ever saw the inside of her kitchen, or that she knew exactly where it was; but aunt Fidget was in all parts of the house at once--she saw every thing, heard every thing, remembered every thing, and scolded about every thing. She was not to be imposed upon, either by servants or trades-people. She kept a sharp look out upon them all. She knew when and where to go to market. Keen was her eye for the turn of the scale, and she took pretty good care that the butcher should not dab his mutton chops too hastily in the scale, making momentum tell for weight. I cannot think what she wanted with meat, for she looked as if she ate nothing but raspings, and drank nothing but vinegar. Her love of justice in the matter of purchasing was so great, that when her fishmonger sent her home a pennyworth of sprats, she sent one back to be changed because it had but one eye.
She had such a strict inventory of all her goods and chattels, that, if any one plundered her of a pin, she was sure to find it out. She would miss a pea out of a peck; and she once kept her establishment up half the night to hunt for a bit of cheese that was missing--it was at last found in the mouse-trap. "You extravagant minx," said she to the maid, "here is cheese enough to bait three mouse-traps;" and she nearly had her fingers snapped off in her haste to rescue the cheese from its prison. I used not to dine with my aunt Fidget so often as with my aunt Bridget, for my aunt Fidget worried my very life out with the history of every article that was brought to table. She made me undergo the narration of all that she had said, and all that the butcher or poulterer had said, concerning the purchase of the provision; and she used always to tell me what was the price of mutton when her mother was a girl--two pence a pound for the common pieces, and twopence-halfpenny for the prime pieces. Moreover, she always entertained me with an account of all her troubles, and with the sins and iniquities of her abominable servants, whom she generally changed once a month. Indeed, had I been inclined to indulge her with more of my company, I could not always manage to find her residence; for she was moving about from place to place, so that it was like playing a game of hunt the slipper to endeavor to find her. She once actually threatened to leave London altogether, if she could not find some more agreeable residence than hitherto it had been her lot to meet with. But there was one evil in my aunt Fidget's behavior, which disturbed me more than any thing else; she was always expecting that I should join her in abusing my placid aunt Bridget. Aunt Bridget's style of house-keeping was not, perhaps, quite the pink of perfection, but it was not for me to find fault with it; and if she did sit still all day, she never found fault with those who did not; she never said any thing evil of any of her neighbors. Aunt Fidget might be flying about all day like a witch upon a broomstick; but aunt Bridget made no remarks on it; she let her fly. The very sight of aunt Fidget was enough to put one out of breath--she whisked about from place to place at such a rapid rate, always talking at the rate of nineteen to the dozen. We boys used to say of her that she never sat long enough in a chair to warm the cover. But she is gone--_requiescat in pace_;[1] and that is more than ever she did in her life-time.