ABSTRACT
The Vicar of Dulham agreed with his wife and sister in one thing at all events, they preferred old-fashioned domestics fished out of odd rustic corners to the ladyising and gentlemanising persons whom the town registry offices of to-day mostly supply. One we have already seen – the old gardener and general outdoor man Fenrake; his wife, a few years younger, was cook and housekeeper, and both were thoroughly efficient in their places. As much cannot be said for Mrs Fenrake’s niece Fidgfumblasquidiot Grewel, who had been taken into the vicarage at the same time. Some four-and-twenty years before the opening of this story, Mr Bristley, then newly installed at Dulham, had represented to the village-girl’s mother – a plump, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, silly little woman, whose idol was royalty and ‘haristocracy’ – that Fidgfumblasquidiot was a very aristocratic name, and he had obtained Mrs Grewel’s consent to have her christened by it one Sunday afternoon, while a titter ran through the congregation. ‘Great thing, you know,’ Mr Bristley explained after the service was over, ‘for girls to have original names, and not to be all just Polly and Susey and Lizzie.’ Honest, comely little Fidge – for she was of slight make – was specially Lesbia’s attendant, and had lived with the family about eleven years in the capacity of a maid-of-no-work. Her mornings were spent in dawdling over her small jobs, and her entire afternoons in dawdling over the change of her gown. This latter operation generally lasted from about three to six p.m., but it must be said that when it was done she always looked very neat and even graceful.
