Volume Ii Part 8 (1/2)

8. ”Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr. Tulliver doesn't like his dinner before two o'clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o' you.”

”Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands--they're for putting everything off--they'll put the dinner off till after tea, if they've got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work; but it's a pity for you, Bessy, as you haven't got more strength o' mind. It'll be well if your children don't suffer for it. And I hope you've not gone and got a great dinner for us. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of for the kitchen,” Mrs. Glegg added, in a tone of emphatic protest, ”and a plain pudding, with a spoonful o' sugar, and no spice, 'ud be far more becoming.”

9. With sister Glegg in this humor, there was a cheerful prospect for the day. Mrs. Tulliver never went the length of quarrelling with her, but this point of the dinner was a tender one, and not at all new, so that she could make the same answer she had often made before.

”Mr. Tulliver says he always _will_ have a good dinner for his friends while he can pay for it,” she said, ”and he's a right to do as he likes in his own house, sister.”

10. ”Well, Bessy, _I_ can't leave your children enough out o' my savings, to keep 'em from ruin. And you mustn't look to having any o'

Mr. Glegg's money, for it's well if I don't go first--he comes of a long-lived family; and if he was to die and leave me well for my life, he'd tie all the money up to go back to his own kin.”

11. The sound of wheels while Mrs. Glegg was speaking was an interruption highly welcome to Mrs. Tulliver, who hastened out to receive sister Pullet--it must be sister Pullet, because the sound was that of a four-wheel.

PART II.

1. Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before Mrs. Tulliver's door, and it was apparently requisite that she should shed a few more before getting out, for though her husband and Mrs.

Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head sadly, as she looked through her tears at the vague distance. ”Why, whativer is the matter, sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver.

2. There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs. Pullet slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance at Mr. Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from injury. Mr. Pullet was a small man with a high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal ease.

3. It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization--the sight of a fas.h.i.+onably drest female in grief. Perceiving that the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly backward--a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once more have a charm.

4. Mrs. Pullet brushed each doorpost with great nicety, about the lat.i.tude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across the shoulders), and having done that, sent the muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlor where Mrs. Glegg was seated.

5. ”Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?” said Mrs. Glegg, rather sharply, as they shook hands.

Mrs. Pullet sat down--lifting up her mantle carefully behind, before she answered--

”She's gone. Died the day before yesterday, an' her legs was as thick as my body,” she added, with deep sadness, after a pause. ”They'd tapped her no end o' times, and the water--they say you might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked.”

6. ”Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoever she may be,”

said Mrs. Glegg, with the prompt.i.tude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear and decided; ”but I can't think who you're talking of, for my part.”

”But _I_ know,” said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her head; ”and there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as its old Mrs. Sutton o' the Twentylands.”

”Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance as I've ever heared of,” said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when anything happened to her own ”kin,” but not on other occasions.

7. ”She said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she said, 'Mrs. Pullet, if ever you have the dropsy, you'll think o' me.' She _did_ say so,” added Mrs. Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again; ”those were her very words. And she's to be buried o' Sat.u.r.day, and Pullet's bid to the funeral.”

”Sophy,” said Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of rational remonstrance--”Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and injuring your health about people as don't belong to you. Your poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o' the family as I ever heard of. You couldn't fret no more than this, if we'd heared as our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will.”

8. Mrs. Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much.

”Ah!” she sighed, shaking her head at the idea that there were but few who could enter fully into her experiences. ”Sister, I may as well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the cap-box was put out?” she added, turning to her husband.

Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.