Mrs Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious consideration, which determined her to single out a particular key.

`I'am afraid it'll be troublesome to you - getting it out, sister,' said Mrs Tulliver, `but I should like to see what sort of a crown she's made you.'

Mrs Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find the new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from a too superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In this wardrobe Mrs Pullet was seeking something small enough to be hidden among layers of linen - it was a door-key.

`You must come with me into the best room,' said Mrs Pullet.

`May the children come too, sister?' inquired Mrs Tulliver, who saw that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager.

`Well,' said aunt Pullet, reflectively, `it'll perhaps be safer for 'em to come - they'll be touching something, if we leave 'em behind.'

So they went in procession along the bright and slippery corridor, dimly lighted by the semi-lunar top of the window, which rose above the closed shutter: it was really quite solemn. Aunt Pullet paused and unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the passage - a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly, showed what looked like the corpses of furnitute in white shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upwards. Lucy laid hold of Maggie's frock, and Maggie's heart beat rapidly.

Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then unlocked the wardrobe, with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet after sheet of silver-paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have preferred something more strikingly preternatural. But few things could have been more impressive to Mrs Tulliver. She looked all round it in silence for some moments and then said emphatically, `Well, sister, I'll never speak against the full crowns again!'

It was a great concession, and Mrs Pullet felt it: she felt something was due to it.

`You'd like to see it on, sister?' she said, sadly. `I'll open the shutter a bit further.'

`Well, if you don't mind taking off your cap, sister,' said Mrs Tulliver.

Mrs Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a jutting promontory of curls which was common to the more mature and judicious women of those times, and placing the bonnet on her head, turned slowly round, like a draper's lay-figure, that Mrs Tulliver might miss no point of view.

I've sometimes thought there's a loop too much o' ribbon on this left side, sister: what do you think?' said Mrs Pullet.

Mrs Tulliver looked earnestly at the pointed indicated and turned her head to one side. `Well, I think it's best as it is: if you meddled with it, sister, you might repent.'

`That's true,' said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and looking at it contemplatively.

`How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?' said Mrs Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting a humble imitation of this chef-d'æuvre made from a piece of silk she had at home.