`I'd no quarrel wi' my sister, Mr Glegg, and it's false to say it. Mr Tulliver's none o' my blood, and it was him quarrelled with me, and drove me out o' the house. But perhaps you'd have had me stay and be swore at, Mr Glegg; perhaps you was vexed not to hear more abuse and foul language poured out upo' your own wife. But let me tell you, it's your disgrace.'
`Did ever anybody hear the like i' this parish?' said Mr Glegg, getting hot. `A woman with everything provided for her, and allowed to keep her own money the same as if it was settled on her, and with a gig new- stuffed and lined at no end o' expense, and provided for when I die beyond anything she could expect... to go on i' this way, biting and snapping like a mad dog! It's beyond everything as God A'mighty should ha' made women so.' (These last words were uttered in a tone of sorrowful agitation: Mr Glegg pushed his tea from him, and tapped the table with both his hands.)
`Well, Mr Glegg! if those are your feelings, it's best they should be known,' said Mrs Glegg, taking off her napkin, and folding it in an excited manner. `But if you talk o' my being provided for beyond what I could expect, I beg leave to tell you as I'd a right to except a many things as I don't find. And as to my being like a mad dog, it's well if you're not cried shame on by the county for your treatment of me, for it's what I can't bear, and I won't bear'...
Here Mrs Glegg's voice intimated that she was going to cry, and breaking off from speech, she rang the bell violently.
`Sally,' she said, rising from her chair, and speaking in rather a choked voice, `light a fire upstairs, and put the blinds down. Mr Glegg, you'll please to order what you'd like for dinner. I shall have gruel.'
Mrs Glegg walked across the room to the small book-case, and took down Baxter's `Saints' Everlasting Rest'which she carried with her upstairs. It was the book she was accustomed to lay open before her on special occasions: on wet Sunday mornings - or when she heard of a death in the family - or when, as in this case, her quarrel with Mr Glegg had been set an octave higher than usual.
But Mrs Glegg carried something else upstairs with her, which together with the `Saints' Rest' and the gruel, may have had some influence in gradually calming her feelings and making it possible for her to endure existence on the ground-floor shortly before tea-time. This was partly Mr Glegg's suggestion that she would do well to let her five hundred lie still until a good investment turned up, and, further, his parenthetic hint at his handsome provision for her in case of his death. Mr Glegg, like all men of his stamp, was extremely reticent about his will, and Mrs Glegg in her gloomier moments, had forebodings that, like other husbands of whom she had heard, he might cherish the mean project of heightening her grief at his death by leaving her poorly off, in which case she was firmly resolved that she would have scarcely any weeper on her bonnet and would cry no more than if he had been a second husband. But if he had really shown her any testamentary tenderness, it would be affecting to think of him, poor man, when he was gone, and even his foolish fuss about the flowers and garden-stuff, and his insistence on the subject of snails, would be touching when it was once fairly at an end. To survive Mr Glegg and talk eulogistically of him, as a man who might have his weaknesses, but who had done the right thing by her notwithstanding his numerous poor relations - to have sums of interest coming in more frequently and secrete it in various corners baffling to the most ingenious of thieves (for, to Mrs Glegg's mind, banks and strong boxes would have nullified the pleasure of property - she might as well have taken her food in capsules) - finally, to be looked up to by her own family and the neighbourhood, so as no woman can ever hope to be who has not the praeterite and present dignity comprised in being a `widow well left,' - all this made a flattering and conciliatory view of the future. So that when good Mr Glegg, restored to good-humour by much hoeing, and moved by the sight of his wife's empty chair with her knitting rolled up in the corner, went upstairs to her and observed that the bell had been tolling for poor Mr Morton, Mrs Glegg answered magnanimously, quite as if she had been an uninjured woman, `Ah!then there'll be a good business for somebody to take to.'