behaving agreeably was included in
the Almighty's intentions about families. She rose slowly without any
sign of resentment, and said in her usual muffled monotone, "Brother, I
hope the new doctor will be able to do something for you. Solomon says
there's great talk of his cleverness. I'm sure it's my wish you should
be spared. And there's none more ready to nurse you than your own
sister and your own nieces, if you'd only say the word. There's
Rebecca, and Joanna, and Elizabeth, you know."

"Ay, ay, I remember--you'll see I've remembered 'em all--all dark and
ugly. They'd need have some money, eh? There never was any beauty in
the women of our family; but the Featherstones have always had some
money, and the Waules too. Waule had money too. A warm man was Waule.
Ay, ay; money's a good egg; and if you 've got money to leave behind
you, lay it in a warm nest. Good-by, Mrs. Waule." Here Mr.
Featherstone pulled at both sides of his wig as if he wanted to deafen
himself, and his sister went away ruminating on this oracular speech of
his. Notwithstanding her jealousy of the Vincys and of Mary Garth,
there remained as the nethermost sediment in her mental shallows a
persuasion that her brother Peter Featherstone could never leave his
chief property away from his blood-relations:--else, why had the
Almighty carried off his two wives both childless, after he had gained
so much by manganese and things, turning up when nobody expected
it?--and why was there a Lowick parish church, and the Waules and
Powderells all sit ting in the same pew for generations, and the
Featherstone pew next to them, if, the Sunday after her brother Peter's
death, everybody was to know that the property was gone out of the
family? The human mind has at no period accepted a moral chaos; and so
preposterous a result was not strictly conceivable. But we are
frightened at much that is not strictly conceivable.

When Fred came in the old man eyed him with a peculiar twinkle, which
the younger had often had reason to interpret as pride in the
satisfactory details of his appearance.

"You two misses go away," said Mr. Featherstone. "I want to speak to
Fred."

"Come into my room, Rosamond, you will not mind the cold for a little
while," said Mary. The two girls had not only known each other in
childhood, but had been at the same provincial school together (Mary as
an articled pupil), so that they had many memories in common, and liked
very