"But it was no good dodging round pillars or taking circuitous routes down one aisle and up another, in attempts to avoid her. Wherever I went, she was there before me; always brandishing some fresh implement connected with the process which, in any other hands, might have been church cleaning. So at last I gave up trying to avoid her, and stood my ground bravely, in the hopes of gleaning information from her very remarkable conversation. I say 'bravely,' because she became much more terrifying when she talked. She held her left eye shut, with her left hand, put her face very close to mine, and looked at me out of the right eye. She didn't seem able to talk without looking at me; or to look at me, without holding one eye shut.

"I was dining at the Brands' that evening, and happened to say to the man who took me in: 'Do you know how terrifying it is to talk to a person who holds one eye shut, and looks at you with the other?' He wanted to know what I meant; so I showed how my old lady had done it, with head pushed forward, and elbow well up. Everybody else went into fits; but my man turned out to be a rising oculist, and took it quite seriously; declared it must be a bad case of astigmatism; asked the name of the church, and is going off there to examine her eyes and prescribe glasses!

"I tell you all this, in case she was a protégé of yours; for she remembers you, David.

"I am doubtful as to what manner of reception she will give to my friend the oculist. I felt bound to tell him she would most probably say 'Garn!' and his convulsive amusement, seemed to me disproportionate to the mildness of the joke. Her incomprehensible remarks, and her astonishing cockney make rational conversation with her very difficult. While I was in the church, a mild-looking curate came in, and tried to explain something which was wanted. I could not hear the conversation, but I saw her, at the bottom of the church, holding her eye, and glaring at him. She came back to me, brandishing a dustpan. "Ear that?' she said. 'Garn! As I always say to 'em: "A nod's as good as a wink to a blind 'orse!'"

"Now that sounded like a proverb, and she said it as if it were a very deep pronouncement, which might settle all ecclesiastical difficulties, and solve all parochial problems. But, when one comes to think of it, what on earth does it mean?