We Acquire An Aunt

The Professor came across a naïve painting the other day which took his fancy, and ended up buying it. It’s of a nice, Jane Austenish little lady circa 1810, attired in chaste, provincial finery ‒  a plain white dress with a fichu modestly filling in the neckline, wearing no jewellery, but possessed of a spangled white turban that one suspects was the secret joy of her heart. She is now in the drawing room, and looks as if she has always been there. Her face is very well painted, but the body is so slight in relation to the head that it has an air of caricature. She has an intelligent, noticing look, and she will do very nicely as The Ancestor’s maiden aunt. She doesn’t look, somehow, as if she married.