the pickles be, at present - he didn't like her to go about just yet - she appeared so hurt at this conduct in her son, contradicting her about pickles which she had made after the family receipts inherited from his own grandmother who had died when his mother was a little girl, that he gave way, and they walked together until she turned towards Danish Street, where Mr Hyndmarsh retailed his grocery, not far from the offices of Mr Wakem.

That gentleman was not yet come to his office: would Mrs Tulliver sit down by the fire in his private room and wait for him? She had not long to wait before the punctual attorney entered, knitting his brow with an examining glance at the stout blond woman who rose, curtsying deferentially: - a tallish man, with an aquiline nose and abundant iron-grey hair. You have never seen Mr Wakem before, and are possibly wondering whether he was really as eminent a rascal and as crafty, bitter an enemy of honest humanity in general and of Mr Tulliver in particular, as he is represented to be in that eidolon or portrait of him which we have seen to exist in the miller's mind.

It is clear that the irascible miller was a man to interpret any chance shot that grazed him as an attempt on his own life, and was liable to entanglements in this puzzling world which, due consideration had to his own infallibility, required the hypothesis of a very active diabolical agency to explain them. It is still possible to believe that the attorney was not more guilty towards him, than an ingenious machine which performs its work with much regularity is guilty towards the rash man who, venturing too near it, is caught up by some fly-wheel or other, and suddenly converted into unexpected sausages.

But it is really impossible to decide this question by a glance at his person: the lines and lights of the human countenance are like other symbols - not always easy to read without a key. On an a priori view of Wakem's aquiline nose which offended Mr Tulliver there was not more rascality than in the shape of his stiff shirt collar, though this too, along with his nose, might have become fraught with damnatory meaning when once the rascality was ascertained.

`Mrs Tulliver, I think?' said Mr Wakem.

`Yes, sir, Miss Elizabeth Dodson as was.'

`Pray be seated. You have some business with me?'

`Well, sir, yes,' said Mrs Tulliver, beginning to feel alarmed at her own courage now she was really in presence of the formidable man, and reflecting that she had not settled with herself how she should begin. Mr Wakem felt in his waistcoat pockets and looked at her in silence.

`I hope, sir,' she began at last, `I hope, sir, you're not a-thinking as I bear you any ill-will because o' my husband's losing his lawsuit, and the bailies being put in, and the linen being sold - O dear!... for I wasn't brought up in that way. I'm sure you remember my father, sir, for he was close friends with Squire Darleigh, and we allays went to the dances there - the Miss Dodsons - nobody could be more looked on - and justly, for there was four of us, and you're quite aware as Mrs Glegg and Mrs Deane are my sisters. And as for going to law and losing money and having sales before you're dead, I never saw anything o' that before I was married nor for a long while after. And I'm not to be answerable for my bad luck i' marrying out o' my own family into one where the goings-on was different. And as for being drawn in t' abuse you as other folks abuse you, sir, that I niver was, and nobody can say it of me.'

Mrs Tulliver shook her head a little and looked at the hem of her pocket handkerchief.

`I've no doubt of what you say, Mrs Tulliver,' said Mr Wakem, with cold politeness. `But you have some question to ask me?'

`Well, sir, yes. But that's what I've said to myself - I've said you'd have some nat'ral feeling; and as for my husband as hasn't been himself for this two months, I'm not a-defending him, in no way, for being so hot about th' erigation - not but what there's worse men, for he never wronged nobody of a shilling nor


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