Book 3 - Chapter 3

The Family Council

It was at eleven o'clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles
came to hold their consultation. The fire was lighted in the large
parlor, and poor Mrs. Tulliver, with a confused impression that it was
a great occasion, like a funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels, and
unpinned the curtains, adjusting them in proper folds, looking round
and shaking her head sadly at the polished tops and legs of the
tables, which sister Pullet herself could not accuse of insufficient
brightness.

Mr. Deane was not coming, he was away on business; but Mrs. Deane
appeared punctually in that handsome new gig with the head to it, and
the livery-servant driving it, which had thrown so clear a light on
several traits in her character to some of her female friends in St.
Ogg's. Mr. Deane had been advancing in the world as rapidly as Mr.
Tulliver had been going down in it; and in Mrs. Deane's house the
Dodson linen and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordinate
position, as a mere supplement to the handsomer articles of the same
kind, purchased in recent years,--a change which had caused an
occasional coolness in the sisterly intercourse between her and Mrs.
Glegg, who felt that Susan was getting "like the rest," and there
would soon be little of the true Dodson spirit surviving except in
herself, and, it might be hoped, in those nephews who supported the
Dodson name on the family land, far away in the Wolds.

People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those
immediately under our own eyes; and it seems superfluous, when we
consider the remote geographical position of the Ethiopians, and how
very little the Greeks had to do with them, to inquire further why
Homer calls them "blameless."

Mrs. Deane was the first to arrive; and when she had taken her seat in
the large parlor, Mrs. Tulliver came down to her with her comely face
a little distorted, nearly as it would have been if she had been
crying. She was not a woman who could shed abundant tears, except in
moments when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually
vivid, but she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm under
present circumstances.

"Oh, sister, what a world this is!" she exclaimed as she entered;
"what trouble, oh dear!"

Mrs. Deane was a thin-lipped woman, who made small well-considered
speeches on peculiar occasions, repeating them afterward to her
husband, and asking him if she had not spoken very properly.

"Yes, sister," she said deliberately, "this is a changing world, and
we don't know to-day what may happen tomorrow. But it's right to be
prepared for all things, and if trouble's sent, to remember as it
isn't sent without a cause. I'm very sorry for you as