eristic of grief is checked and varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an interesting problem to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and eyes half blinded by the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too-devious step through a door-place, she might crush her buckram sleeves too, and the deep consciousness of this possibility produces a composition of forces by which she takes a line that just clears the door-post. Perceiving that the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly backward, a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once more have a charm. As the tears subside a little, and with her head leaning backward at the angle that will not injure her bonnet, she endures that terrible moment when grief, which has made all things else a weariness, has itself become weary; she looks down pensively at her bracelets, and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studied fortuity which would be gratifying [Ссылки могут видеть только зарегистрированные пользователи. ] to her mind if it were once more in a calm and healthy state.
Mrs. Pullet brushed each door-post with great nicety, about the latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not measure [Ссылки могут видеть только зарегистрированные пользователи. ] a yard and a half across the shoulders), and having done that sent the muscles of [Ссылки могут видеть только зарегистрированные пользователи. ] her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlor where Mrs. Glegg was seated.
“Well, sister, you’re late; what’s the matter?” said Mrs. Glegg, rather sharply, as they shook hands.
Mrs. Pullet sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind, before she answered —
“She’s gone,” unconsciously using an impressive figure of rhetoric.
“It isn’t the glass this time, then,” thought Mrs. Tulliver.
“Died the day before yesterday,” continued Mrs. Pullet; “an’ her legs was as thick as my body,”’ she added, with deep sadness, after a pause. “They’d tapped her no end o’ [Ссылки могут видеть только зарегистрированные пользователи. ] times, and the water — they say you might ha’ swum in it, if you’d liked.”
“Well, Sophy, it’s a mercy she’s gone, then, whoever she may be,” said Mrs. Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear and decided; “but I can’t think who you’re talking of, for my part.”
“But I know,” said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her head; “and there isn’t another such a dropsy in [Ссылки могут видеть только зарегистрированные пользователи. ] the parish. I know as it’s old Mrs. Sutton o’ the Twentylands.”
“Well, she’s no kin o’ yours, nor much acquaintance as I’ve ever heared of,” said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when anything happened [Ссылки могут видеть только зарегистрированные пользователи. ] to her own “kin,” but not on other occasions.
“She’s so much acquaintance as I’ve seen her legs when they was like bladders. And an old lady as had doubled her money over and over again, and kept it all in her own management to [Ссылки могут видеть только зарегистрированные пользователи. ] the last, and had her pocket with her keys in under her pillow constant. There isn’t many old par_ish’ners like her, I doubt.”
“And they say she’d took
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