He was well-to-do, and his house and firing and lighting were given him in addition to high wages. He did not pay her anything, of course,--she was his sister. But it was a comfortable home, the children were fond of her,--and also of her cakes and puddings,--and she looked forward to spending the rest of her days there. But at the end of two years he married again, and when the new wife came, the old sister went. This was how it came about that, without a penny in her pocket, and with nothing save her old twisted hands to keep her out of the workhouse, she was adrift again at an age which made her undesirable to everybody except foolish people like ourselves, fresh from the horrors of our experience with 'Enrietter. It never occurred to Trimmer that there was anything to complain of. For her, all had always been for the best in the best of all possible worlds. That she had now chanced upon chambers and two people and one dissipated cat to take care of, and more to do than ought to have been asked of her, was but another stroke of her invariable good luck.
She had an amazing faculty of turning all her little molehills into mountains of pleasure. I have never known anything like the joy she got from her family, though I never could quite make out why. She was inordinately proud of the brother who had been so ready to get rid of her; the sister-in-law who had replaced her was a paragon of virtue; the nieces were so many infant phenomena, and one Sunday when, with the South London world of fashion, they were walking in the Embankment Gardens, she presumed so far as to bring them up to our chambers to show them off to me, and the affectionate glances she cast upon their expansive lace collars explained that she still had her uses in the family. There was also a cousin whom, to Trimmer's embarrassment, I often found in our kitchen; but much worse than frequent visits could be forgiven her, since it was she who, after Jimmy's inglorious end, brought us William Penn, a pussy then small enough to go into her coat-pocket, but already gay enough to dance his way straight into our hearts.
Trimmer's pride reached high-water mark when it came to a younger brother who travelled in "notions" for a city firm. His proprietor was the personage the rich Jew always is in the city of London, and was made Alderman and Lord Mayor, and knighted and baroneted, during the years Trimmer spent with us. She took enormous satisfaction in the splendour of this success, counting it another piece of her good luck to be connected, however remotely, with anybody so distinguished. She had almost an air of proprietorship on the 9th of November, when from our windows she watched his Show passing along the Embankment; she could not have been happier if she herself had been seated in the gorgeous Cinderella coach, with the coachman in wig and cocked hat, and the powdered footmen perched up behind; and when J. went to the Lord Mayor's dinner that same evening at the Guildhall, it became for her quite a family affair. I often fancied that she thought it reflected glory on us all to have the sister of a man who travelled in "notions" for a knight and a Lord Mayor, living in our chambers; though she would never have taken the liberty of showing it.