“I’m afraid it’ll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver; “but I should like to see what sort of a crown she’s made you.”
Mrs Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find a new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from a too superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In this wardrobe Mrs Pullet was seeking something small enough 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.