spirit to move next to that great authority, who was handling his watch-seals and trimming his outlines with a determination not to show anything so compromising to a man of ability as wonder or surprise.
“I suppose you know everything about what my poor brother’s done, Mr Trumbull,” said Mrs Waule, in the lowest of her woolly tones, while she turned her crape-shadowed bonnet towards Mr Trumbull’s ear.
“My good lady, whatever was told me was told in confidence,” said the auctioneer, putting his hand up to screen that secret.
“Them who’ve made sure of their good-luck may be disappointed yet,” Mrs Waule continued, finding some relief in this communication,
“Hopes are often delusive,” said Mr Trumbull, still in confidence.
“Ah!” said Mrs Waule, looking across at the Vincys, and then moving back to the side of her sister Martha.
“It's wonderful how close poor Peter was,” she said, in the same undertones. “We none of us know what he might have had on his mind. I only hope and trust he wasn’t a worse liver than we think of, Martha.”
Poor Mrs Cranch was bulky, and, breathing asthmatically, had the additional motive for making her remarks unexceptionable and giving them a general bearing, that even her whispers were loud and liable to sudden bursts like those of a deranged barrel-organ.
“I never was covetious, Jane,” she replied; “but I have six children and have buried three, and I didn’t marry into money. The eldest, that sits there, is but nineteen—so I leave you to guess. And stock always short, and land most awkward. But if ever I've begged and prayed, it’s been to God above; though where there’s one brother a bachelor and the other childless after twice marrying—anybody might think!”
Meanwhile, Mr Vincy had glanced at the passive face of Mr Rigg, and had taken out his snuff-box and tapped it, but had put it back again unopened as an indulgence which, however clarifying to the judgment, was unsuited to the occasion. “I shouldn’t wonder if Featherstone had better feelings than any of us gave him credit for,” he observed, in the ear of his wife. “This funeral shows a thought about everybody: it looks well when a man wants to be followed by his friends, and if they are humble, not to be ashamed of them. I should be all the better pleased if he’d left lots of small legacies. They may be uncommonly useful to fellows in a small way.”
“Everything is as handsome as could be, crape and silk and everything,” said Mrs Vincy, contentedly.
But I am sorry to say that Fred was under some difficulty in repressing a laugh, which would have been more unsuitable than his father's snuff-box. Fred had overheard Mr Jonah suggesting something about a “love-child,” and with this thought in his mind, the stranger’s face, which happened to be opposite him, affected him too ludicrously. Mary Garth, discerning his distress in the twitchings of
