It was at eleven o’clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles came to hold their consultation¹. The fire was lighted in the large parlor², and poor Mrs. Tulliver, with a confused impression that it was a great occasion, like a funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels³, 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 insufficient⁴ 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 linen⁵ and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordinate position, as a mere⁶ supplement to the handsomer articles of the same kind, purchased in recent years — a change which had caused an occasional coolness in the sisterly intercourse⁷ 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 superfluous⁸, when we consider the remote geographical⁹ position of the Ethiopians, and how very little the Greeks had to do with them, to inquire further why Homer calls them “blameless.”

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