Chapter XLIV: Single Blessedness

What a cheerful, happy, self-congratulating old maid was lost when Fanny became a wife. Only read this extract:--

"'All articles of gentlemen's wearing apparel made--TO
ORDER.'

"Saints and angels! only think of that! Well, thank a kind Providence I never was married. No tyrannical frock-coats, or 'dress-coats,' or Petershams, profane my closets. No vests, or stocks, or dickies crowd my nice laces, and ribbons, and muslins. No overbearing cane keeps company with my silken parasolette. No lumbering great boots tread on the toes of my little slippers and gaiters. Nobody kicks my spinster foot under the table to stop me in the middle of a sentence that I'm bent upon finishing. Nothing on the wide earth that's '_made to order_,' finds admittance into my single-blessed territories. I should be all teeth and claws if there did!"