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 furniture in white shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upward. 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 point indicated, and turned her head on 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’œuvre made from a piece of silk she had at home.
Mrs. Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered, “Pullet pays for it; he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum Church, let the next best be whose it would.”
She began slowly to adjust the trimmings, in preparation for returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.
“Ah,” she said at last, “I may never wear it twice, sister; who knows?”
“Don’t talk o’ that sister,” answered Mrs. Tulliver. “I hope you’ll have your health this summer.”
“Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon after I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we can’t think o’ wearing crape less nor half a year for him.”
“That would be unlucky,” said Mrs. Tulliver, entering thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. “There’s never so much pleasure i’ wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the crowns are so chancy,—never two summers alike.”
“Ah, it’s the way i’ this world,” said Mrs. Pullet, returning the bonnet to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a silence characterized by head-shaking, until they had all issued from the solemn chamber and were in her own room again. Then, beginning to cry, she said, “Sister, if you should never see that bonnet again till I’m dead and gone, you’ll remember I showed it you this day.”
Mrs. Tulliver felt that she ought to be affected, but she was a woman of sparse tears, stout and healthy; she couldn’t cry so much as her sister Pullet did, and had often felt her deficiency at funerals. Her effort to bring tears into her eyes issued in an odd contraction of her face. Maggie, looking on attentively, felt that there was some painful mystery about her aunt’s bonnet which she was considered too young to understand; indignantly conscious, all the while, that she could have understood that, as well as everything else, if she had been taken into confidence.
When they went down, uncle Pullet observed, with some acumen, that he reckoned the missis had been showing her bonnet,—that was what had made them so long upstairs. With Tom the interval had seemed still longer, for he had been seated in irksome constraint on the edge of a sofa directly opposite his uncle Pullet, who regarded him with twinkling gray eyes, and occasionally addressed him as “Young sir.”
“Well, young sir, what do you learn at school?” was a standing question with uncle Pullet; whereupon Tom always looked sheepish, rubbed his hands across his face, and answered, “I don’t know.” It was altogether so embarrassing to be seated tête-à-tête with uncle Pullet, that Tom could not even look at the prints on the walls, or the flycages, or the wonderful flower-pots; he saw nothing but his uncle’s gaiters. Not that Tom was in awe of his uncle’s mental superiority; indeed, he had made up his mind that he didn’t want to be a gentleman farmer, because he shouldn’t like to be such a thin-legged, silly fellow as his uncle Pullet,—a molly-coddle, in fact. A boy’s sheepishness is by no means a sign of overmastering reverence; and while you are making encouraging advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer. The only consolation I can suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you have mastered a restive horse, or thrashed a drayman, or have got a gun in your hand, that these shy juniors feel you to be a truly admirable and enviable character. At least, I am quite sure of Tom Tulliver’s sentiments on these points. In very tender years, when he still wore a lace border under his outdoor cap, he was often observed peeping through the bars of a gate and making minatory gestures with his small forefinger while he scolded the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to strike terror into their astonished minds; indicating thus early that desire for mastery over the inferior animals, wild and domestic, including cockchafers, neighbors’ dogs, and small sisters, which in all ages has been an attribute of so much promise for the fortunes of our race. Now, Mr. Pullet never rode anything taller than a low pony, and was the least predatory of men, considering firearms dangerous, as apt to go off of themselves by nobody’s particular desire. So that Tom was not without strong reasons when, in confidential talk with a chum, he had described uncle Pullet as a nincompoop, taking care at the same time to observe that he was a very “rich fellow.”
The only alleviating circumstance in a tête-à-tête with uncle Pullet was that he kept a variety of lozenges and peppermint-drops about his person, and when at a loss for conversation, he filled up the void by proposing a mutual solace of this kind.
“Do you like peppermints, young sir?” required only a tacit answer when it was accompanied by a presentation of the article in question.
The appearance of the little girls suggested to uncle Pullet the further solace of small sweet-cakes, of which he also kept a stock under lock and key for his own private eating on wet days; but the three children had no sooner got the tempting delicacy between their fingers, than aunt Pullet desired them to abstain from eating it till the tray and the plates came, since with those crisp cakes they would make the floor “all over” crumbs. Lucy didn’t mind that much, for the cake was so pretty, she thought it was rather a pity to eat it; but Tom, watching his opportunity while the elders were talking, hastily stowed it in his mouth