Now Miranda was the deacon’s housekeeper,—­Mrs. Tubman having peacefully departed this life some years before,—­and, speaking appreciatively of the sex, a more prim, prudent, particular member of it never existed.  She had been initiated, some ten years before, into that amiable sisterhood commonly known as spinsters, and was, it might be added, a typical representative.  Industrious?  You may well say so.  Her floors, stoves, dishes, linen,—–­ well, if they weren’t clean, nowhere on earth might you find clean ones.  She hated dirt as she did original sin, and I’ve no doubt but that in her own mind considered its existence in the world as the one certain, damning and conclusive evidence of the Fall.  It was really an entertainment to see her looking about the house for a speck of dirt; and the cold-blooded manner in which she would seize upon it, bear it away in the dust pan, and, removing the lid of the stove, consign it to the flames, was—­well,—­what should I say,—­yes, that’s it—­was most edifying.

Amiable!  Yes,—­after her way.  And a very noiseless sort of way it was, too.  For, though she had lived with the deacon for nearly a dozen years, he had never known her to so far forget her propriety as to indulge in anything more hearty and hilarious than the most decorous of smiles, which smile was such a kind of illumination to her face as a star of inconceivably small magnitude makes to the sky in trailing across it.

[Illustration:  “Miranda belonged to that sisterhood commonly known as spinsters.”]

Of her personal appearance I will say—­nothing.  Sacred let it be to memory!  If you ever saw her, or one like her, whether full front or profile, whether sideways or edgewise, the vision, I am ready to swear, remains with you vividly still.  Let it suffice, then, when I observe that Miss Miranda was not physically stout, and that the deacon’s standing joke was by no means a bad one when he described her as “not actually burdened with fat.”  Yes, she was a very cleanly, very thin, very prudent, very particular person, that never joined in any sports or amusements; never joked or participated in any happy events in a happy, joyous fashion, but lived unobtrusively, and, I may say, coldly, in her own prim, cold, bloodless, little world.

“Gracious me!” exclaimed the deacon, as he looked at the package.  “Gracious me! what has got into Mirandy?” And he looked scrutinizingly at the little, fine, thin, faintly-traced inscription on the package, as if the writer had begrudged the ink that must be expended on the letters, or from a subtle and mystic self-sympathy had made the chirography faint, delicate, and attenuated as her own self.