I am a single old woman.  I should say at once, without being at all afraid of the name, I am an old maid; only that I am older than the phrase would express.  The time was when I had my love-trouble, but, it is long and long ago.  He was killed at sea (Dear Heaven rest his blessed head!) when I was twenty-five.  I have all my life, since ever I can remember, been deeply fond of children.  I have always felt such a love for them, that I have had my sorrowful and sinful times when I have fancied something must have gone wrong in my life—­something must have been turned aside from its original intention I mean—­or I should have been the proud and happy mother of many children, and a fond old grandmother this day.  I have soon known better in the cheerfulness and contentment that God has blessed me with and given me abundant reason for; and yet I have had to dry my eyes even then, when I have thought of my dear, brave, hopeful, handsome, bright-eyed Charley, and the trust meant to cheer me with.  Charley was my youngest brother, and he went to India.  He married there, and sent his gentle little wife home to me to be confined, and she was to go back to him, and the baby was to be left with me, and I was to bring it up.  It never belonged to this life.  It took its silent place among the other incidents in my story that might have been, but never were.  I had hardly time to whisper to her “Dead my own!” or she to answer, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!  O lay it on my breast and comfort Charley!” when she had gone to seek her baby at Our Saviour’s feet.  I went to Charley, and I told him there was nothing left but me, poor me; and I lived with Charley, out there, several years.  He was a man of fifty, when he fell asleep in my arms.  His face had changed to be almost old and a little stern; but, it softened, and softened when I laid it down that I might cry and pray beside it; and, when I looked at it for the last time, it was my dear, untroubled, handsome, youthful Charley of long ago.

—­I was going on to tell that the loneliness of the House to Let brought back all these recollections, and that they had quite pierced my heart one evening, when Flobbins, opening the door, and looking very much as if she wanted to laugh but thought better of it, said: 

“Mr. Jabez Jarber, ma’am!”

Upon which Mr. Jarber ambled in, in his usual absurd way, saying: 

“Sophonisba!”

Which I am obliged to confess is my name.  A pretty one and proper one enough when it was given to me:  but, a good many years out of date now, and always sounding particularly high-flown and comical from his lips.  So I said, sharply: 

“Though it is Sophonisba, Jarber, you are not obliged to mention it, that I see.”

In reply to this observation, the ridiculous man put the tips of my five right-hand fingers to his lips, and said again, with an aggravating accent on the third syllable: