like her fair daughter,
somewhat short in stature) that this uncertainty of disposition strengthened and
increased with her temporal prosperity; and divers wise men and matrons, on
friendly terms with the locksmith and his family, even went so far as to assert,
that a tumble down some half-dozen rounds in the world's ladder - such as the
breaking of the bank in which her husband kept his money, or some little fall of
that kind - would be the making of her, and could hardly fail to render her one
of the most agreeable companions in existence. Whether they were right or wrong
in this conjecture, certain it is that minds, like bodies, will often fall into
a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort, and like them, are
often successfully cured by remedies in themselves very nauseous and
unpalatable.
    Mrs. Varden's chief aider and abettor, and at the same time her principal
victim and object of wrath, was her single domestic servant, one Miss Miggs; or
as she was called, in conformity with those prejudices of society which lop and
top from poor handmaidens all such genteel excrescences - Miggs. This Miggs was
a tall young lady, very much addicted to pattens in private life; slender and
shrewish, of a rather uncomfortable figure, and though not absolutely
ill-looking, of a sharp and acid visage. As a general principle and abstract
proposition, Miggs held the male sex to be utterly contemptible and unworthy of
notice; to be fickle, false, base, sottish, inclined to perjury, and wholly
undeserving. When particularly exasperated against them (which, scandal said,
was when Sim Tappertit slighted her most) she was accustomed to wish with great
emphasis that the whole race of women could but die off, in order that the men
might be brought to know the real value of the blessings by which they set so
little store; nay, her feeling for her order ran so high, that she sometimes
declared, if she could only have good security for a fair, round number - say
ten thousand - of young virgins following her example, she would, to spite
mankind, hang, drown, stab, or poison herself, with a joy past all expression.
    It was the voice of Miggs that greeted the locksmith, when he knocked at his
own house, with a shrill cry of »Who's there?«
    »Me, girl, me,« returned Gabriel.
    »What, already, sir!« said Miggs, opening the door with a look of surprise.
»We were just getting on our