
than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs. Glegg's - why she belonged,
like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter of private
judgment.
    Mrs. Glegg did not alter her will in consequence of this letter, and cut off
the Tulliver children from their sixth and seventh share in her thousand pounds;
for she had her principles. No one must be able to say of her when she was dead
that she had not divided her money with perfect fairness among her own kin: in
the matter of wills, personal qualities were subordinate to the great
fundamental fact of blood; and to be determined in the distribution of your
property by caprice, and not make your legacies bear a direct ratio to degrees
of kinship, was a prospective disgrace that would have embittered her life. This
had always been a principle in the Dodson family; it was one form of that sense
of honour and rectitude which was a proud tradition in such families - a
tradition which has been the salt of our provincial society.
    But though the letter could not shake Mrs. Glegg's principles, it made the
family breach much more difficult to mend; and as to the effect it produced on
Mrs. Glegg's opinion of Mr. Tulliver - she begged to be understood from that
time forth that she had nothing whatever to say about him: his state of mind,
apparently, was too corrupt for her to contemplate it for a moment. It was not
until the evening before Tom went to school, at the beginning of August, that
Mrs. Glegg paid a visit to her sister Tulliver, sitting in her gig all the
while, and showing her displeasure by markedly abstaining from all advice and
criticism, for, as she observed to her sister Deane, »Bessy must bear the
consequence o' having such a husband, though I'm sorry for her,« and Mrs. Deane
agreed that Bessy was pitiable.
    That evening Tom observed to Maggie, »O my! Maggie, aunt Glegg's beginning
to come again; I'm glad I'm going to school. You'll catch it all now!«
    Maggie was already so full of sorrow at the thought of Tom's going away from
her, that this playful exultation of his seemed very unkind, and she cried
herself to sleep that night.
    Mr. Tulliver's prompt procedure entailed on him further promptitude in
finding the convenient person who was desirous of lending five hundred pounds on
bond. »It must be no client of Wakem's,« he said to himself; and
