“Why, there’s Mrs Moss,” said Mrs Tulliver. “The bad news must ha’ reached her, then”; and she went out to open the door, Maggie eagerly following her.
“That’s fortunate,” said Mrs Glegg. “She can agree to the list o’ things to be bought in. It’s but right she should do her share when it’s her own brother.”
Mrs Moss was in too much agitation to resist Mrs Tulliver’s movement, as she drew her into the parlour automatically, without reflecting that it was hardly kind to take her among so many persons in the first painful moment of arrival. The tall, worn, dark-haired woman was a strong contrast to the Dodson sisters as she entered in her shabby dress, with her shawl and bonnet looking as if they had been hastily huddled on, and with that entire absence of self-consciousness which belongs to keenly felt trouble. Maggie was clinging to her arm; and Mrs Moss seemed to notice no one else except Tom, whom she went straight up to and took by the hand.
“Oh, my dear children,” she burst out, “you’ve no call to think well o’ me; I’m a poor aunt to you, for I’m one o’ them as take all and give nothing. How’s my poor brother?”
“Mr Turnbull thinks he’ll get better,” said Maggie. “Sit down, aunt Gritty. Don’t fret.”
“Oh, my sweet child, I feel torn i’ two,” said Mrs Moss, allowing Maggie to lead her to the sofa, but still not seeming to notice the presence of the rest. “We’ve three hundred pounds o’ my brother’s money, and now he wants it, and you all want it, poor things!—and yet we must be sold up to pay it, and there’s my poor children,—eight of ’em, and the little un of all can’t speak plain. And I feel as if I was a robber. But I’m sure I’d no thought as my brother——”
The poor woman was interrupted by a rising sob.
“Three hundred pounds! oh dear, dear,” said Mrs Tulliver, who, when she had said that her husband had done “unknown” things for his sister, had not had any particular sum in her mind, and felt a wife’s irritation at having been kept in the dark.
“What madness, to be sure!” said Mrs Glegg. “A man with a family! He’d no right to lend his money i’ that way; and without security, I’ll be bound, if the truth was known.”
Mrs Glegg’s voice had arrested Mrs Moss’s attention, and looking up, she said: