The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry

BUT before I can tell any more about Nick, I will have to tell about Aunt Georgie. She came to live in the little two-room house with Nick in perhaps the third year he worked for us. Why did we call her Aunt when we never called Nick Uncle? I suppose it was because Nick was informal and she was formal. I remember my grandparents insisting that my brother and I should say Uncle Nick, but we would never do it. Our friendship was somehow too democratic for that. They might as well have insisted that we boys call each other mister. But we used the title Aunt Georgie from the first. She was a woman of a rather stiff dignity and a certain aloofness, and the term of respect was clearly in order.

She was short and squat, bowlegged, bent, her hands crooked with arthritis, her two or three snaggling front teeth stained with snuff. I suppose she was ugly-though I don't believe I ever made that judgment in those days. She looked like Aunt Georgie, who looked like nobody else.