Sketches by Boz | Page 6

pew-opener has ushered the old lady into her
accustomed seat, dropped a respectful curtsey, and shut the door: and
the same ceremony is repeated on her leaving church, when she walks
home with the family next door but one, and talks about the sermon all
the way, invariably opening the conversation by asking the youngest
boy where the text was.
Thus, with the annual variation of a trip to some quiet place on the

sea-coast, passes the old lady's life. It has rolled on in the same
unvarying and benevolent course for many years now, and must at no
distant period be brought to its final close. She looks forward to its
termination, with calmness and without apprehension. She has
everything to hope and nothing to fear.
A very different personage, but one who has rendered himself very
conspicuous in our parish, is one of the old lady's next-door neighbours.
He is an old naval officer on half-pay, and his bluff and unceremonious
behaviour disturbs the old lady's domestic economy, not a little. In the
first place, he WILL smoke cigars in the front court, and when he wants
something to drink with them-- which is by no means an uncommon
circumstance--he lifts up the old lady's knocker with his walking-stick,
and demands to have a glass of table ale, handed over the rails. In
addition to this cool proceeding, he is a bit of a Jack of all trades, or to
use his own words, 'a regular Robinson Crusoe;' and nothing delights
him better than to experimentalise on the old lady's property. One
morning he got up early, and planted three or four roots of full-grown
marigolds in every bed of her front garden, to the inconceivable
astonishment of the old lady, who actually thought when she got up and
looked out of the window, that it was some strange eruption which had
come out in the night. Another time he took to pieces the eight-day
clock on the front landing, under pretence of cleaning the works, which
he put together again, by some undiscovered process, in so wonderful a
manner, that the large hand has done nothing but trip up the little one
ever since. Then he took to breeding silk-worms, which he WOULD
bring in two or three times a day, in little paper boxes, to show the old
lady, generally dropping a worm or two at every visit. The consequence
was, that one morning a very stout silk-worm was discovered in the act
of walking up-stairs--probably with the view of inquiring after his
friends, for, on further inspection, it appeared that some of his
companions had already found their way to every room in the house.
The old lady went to the seaside in despair, and during her absence he
completely effaced the name from her brass door-plate, in his attempts
to polish it with aqua-fortis.
But all this is nothing to his seditious conduct in public life. He attends

every vestry meeting that is held; always opposes the constituted
authorities of the parish, denounces the profligacy of the
churchwardens, contests legal points against the vestry-clerk, will make
the tax-gatherer call for his money till he won't call any longer, and
then he sends it: finds fault with the sermon every Sunday, says that the
organist ought to be ashamed of himself, offers to back himself for any
amount to sing the psalms better than all the children put together, male
and female; and, in short, conducts himself in the most turbulent and
uproarious manner. The worst of it is, that having a high regard for the
old lady, he wants to make her a convert to his views, and therefore
walks into her little parlour with his newspaper in his hand, and talks
violent politics by the hour. He is a charitable, open- hearted old fellow
at bottom, after all; so, although he puts the old lady a little out
occasionally, they agree very well in the main, and she laughs as much
at each feat of his handiwork when it is all over, as anybody else.

CHAPTER III
--THE FOUR SISTERS

The row of houses in which the old lady and her troublesome
neighbour reside, comprises, beyond all doubt, a greater number of
characters within its circumscribed limits, than all the rest of the parish
put together. As we cannot, consistently with our present plan, however,
extend the number of our parochial sketches beyond six, it will be
better perhaps, to select the most peculiar, and to introduce them at
once without further preface.
The four Miss Willises, then, settled in our parish thirteen years ago. It
is a melancholy reflection that the old adage, 'time and tide wait for no
man,' applies with equal force to the fairer portion of the creation; and