第23章

`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 heared of.You couldn't fret no more than this, if we'd heared as our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will.'

Mrs Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much.It was not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their neighbours who had left them nothing; but Mrs Pullet had married a gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and everything else to the highest pitch of respectability.

`Mrs Sutton didn't die without making her will, though,' said Mr Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to sanction his wife's tears; `ours is a rich parish, but they say there's nobody else to leave as many thousands behind 'em as Mrs Sutton.And she's left no leggicies, to speak on - left it all in a lump to her husband's nevvy.'

`There wasn't much good i' being so rich, then,' said Mrs Glegg, `if she'd got none but husband's kin to leave it to.It's poor work when that's all you've got to pinch yourself for - not as I'm one o' those as 'ud like to die without leaving more money out at interest than other folks had reckoned.But it's a poor tale when it must go out o' your own family.'

`I'm sure, sister,' said Mrs Pullet, who had recovered sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully, `it's a nice sort o' man as Mrs Sutton has left her money to, for he's troubled with the asthmy and goes to bed every night at eight o'clock.He told me about it himself, as free as could be, one Sunday when he came to our church.He wears a hare-skin on his chest, and has a trembling in his talk - quite a gentleman sort o' man.I told him there wasn't many months in the year as I wasn't under the doctor's hands.And he said, `Mrs Pullet I can feel for you.'

That was what he said - the very words.Ah!' sighed Mrs Pullet, shaking her head at the idea that there were few who could enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and white mixture, strong stuff in small bottles, and weak stuff in large bottles, damp boluses at a shilling, and draughts at eighteenpence.`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.He hastened out with a stricken conscience to remedy the omission.

`They'll bring it upstairs, sister,' said Mrs Tulliver, wishing to go at once, lest Mrs Glegg should begin to explain her feelings about Sophy's being the first Dodson who ever ruined her constitution with doctor's stuff.

Mrs Tulliver was fond of going upstairs with her sister Pullet, and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head and discussing millinery in general.This was part of Bessy's weakness that stirred Mrs Glegg's sisterly compassion: Bessy went far too well-drest, considering;and she was too proud to dress her child in the good clothing her sister Glegg gave her from the primeval strata of her wardrobe; it was a sin and a shame to buy anything to dress that child, if it wasn't a pair of shoes.