She could understand a broken leg, or a fever, "when folks kept their beds"; but the disordered fancies of a brain tried just too far, the mad whims of a lady who could "go about," and who insisted upon going about, and changing her dress two or three times a day, and receiving imaginary visitors, and ordering her faithful nurse up and down under the names of half-a-dozen servants she no longer possessed, were beyond her comprehension.
Aunt Theresa said that she and her brothers and sisters had the deepest pity for the poor lady.

They thought it so romantic that she should cry for fresh flowers and dress herself to meet the Queen in a dirty little lodging at the back of Leicester Square, and they were always begging to hear "what else she did." But Nurse Brown seems to have been fondest of relating the smart speeches in which she endeavoured to "put sense into" the devoted French servant who toiled to humour every whim of her unhappy mistress, instead of being "sharp with her," as Nurse Brown advised.

Aunt Theresa had some doubts whether Mrs.Brown ever did make the speeches she reported; but when people say they said this or that, they often only mean that this or that is what they wish they had said.
"If she's mad, I says, shave her head, instead of dressing her hair all day long.

I've knowed mad people as foamed at the mouth and rolled their eyes, and would have done themselves a injury but for a strait-jacket; and I've knowed folks in fevers unreasonable enough, but they kept their beds in a dark room, and didn't know their own mothers.

Madame's ways is beyond me, I says.