"Stuff and nonsense! I don't believe a word of it. It's all a got-up
story. Go to the window, missy; I thought I heard a horse. See if the
doctor's coming."
"Not got up by me, brother, nor yet by Solomon, who, whatever else he
may be--and I don't deny he has oddities--has made his will and parted
his property equal between such kin as he's friends with; though, for
my part, I think there are times when some should be considered more
than others. But Solomon makes it no secret what he means to do."
"The more fool he!" said Mr. Featherstone, with some difficulty;
breaking into a severe fit of coughing that required Mary Garth to
stand near him, so that she did not find out whose horses they were
which presently paused stamping on the gravel before the door.
Before Mr. Featherstone's cough was quiet, Rosamond entered, bearing up
her riding-habit with much grace. She bowed ceremoniously to Mrs.
Waule, who said stiffly, "How do you do, miss?" smiled and nodded
silently to Mary, and remained standing till the coughing should cease,
and allow her uncle to notice her.
"Heyday, miss!" he said at last, "you have a fine color. Where's Fred?"
"Seeing about the horses. He will be in presently."
"Sit down, sit down. Mrs. Waule, you'd better go."
Even those neighbors who had called Peter Featherstone an old fox, had
never accused him of being insincerely polite, and his sister was quite
used to the peculiar absence of ceremony with which he marked his sense
of blood-relationship. Indeed, she herself was accustomed to think that
entire freedom from the necessity of 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 sitting 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.