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. In this particular however, Mrs Glegg did her sister Bessy some injustice, for Mrs Tulliver had really made great efforts to induce Maggie to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk frock made out of her aunt Glegg's but the results had been such1 that Mrs Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom; for Maggie, declaring that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had taken an opportunity of basting it together with the roast beef the first Sunday she wore it, and finding this scheme answer, she had subsequently pumped on the bonnet with its green ribbons so as to give it a general resemblance to a sage cheese garnished with withered lettuces. I must urge in excuse for Maggie that Tom had laughed at her in the bonnet and said she looked like an old Judy. Aunt Pullet, too, made presents of clothes, but these were always new and pretty enough to please Maggie as well as her mother. Of all her sisters Mrs Tulliver certainly preferred her sister Pullet, not without a return of preference; but Mrs Pullet was sorry Bessy had those naughty awkward children; she would do the best she could by them, but it was a pity they weren't as good and as pretty as sister Deane's child. Maggie and Tom, on their part, thought their aunt Pullet tolerable chiefly because she was not their aunt Glegg. Tom always declined to go more than once during his holidays to see either of them: both his uncles tipped him that once, of course, but at his aunt Pullet's there were a great many toads to pelt in the cellar area, so that he preferred the visit to her. Maggie shuddered at the toads and dreamed of them horribly, but she liked her uncle Pullet's musical snuff-box. Still, it was agreed by the sisters in Mrs Tulliver's absence that the Tulliver blood did not mix well with the Dodson blood, that, in fact, poor Bessy's children were Tullivers and that Tom, notwithstanding he had the Dodson complexion, was likely to be as `contrairy' as his father. As for Maggie, she was the picture of her aunt Moss, Mr Tulliver's sister, a large-boned woman who had married as poorly as could be, had no china, and had a husband who had much ado to pay his rent. But when Mrs Pullet was alone with Mrs Tulliver upstairs, the remarks were naturally to the disadvantage of Mrs Glegg, and they agreed in confidence that there was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane would come out next. But