his head in the same direction seemed to insist on it that she should remark how he was squinting, as if he did it with design, like the gypsies when Borrow read the New Testament to them.  This was rather too much for poor Mary; sometimes it made her bilious, sometimes it upset her gravity.  One day that she had an opportunity she could not resist describing the kitchen scene to Fred, who would not be hindered from immediately going to see it, affecting simply to pass through.  But no sooner did he face the four eyes than he had to rush through the nearest door which happened to lead to the dairy, and there under the high roof and among the pans he gave way to laughter which made a hollow resonance perfectly audible in the kitchen.  He fled by another doorway, but Mr. Jonah, who had not before seen Fred’s white complexion, long legs, and pinched delicacy of face, prepared many sarcasms in which these points of appearance were wittily combined with the lowest moral attributes.

“Why, Tom, you don’t wear such gentlemanly trousers—­ you haven’t got half such fine long legs,” said Jonah to his nephew, winking at the same time, to imply that there was something more in these statements than their undeniableness.  Tom looked at his legs, but left it uncertain whether he preferred his moral advantages to a more vicious length of limb and reprehensible gentility of trouser.

In the large wainscoted parlor too there were constantly pairs of eyes on the watch, and own relatives eager to be “sitters-up.”  Many came, lunched, and departed, but Brother Solomon and the lady who had been Jane Featherstone for twenty-five years before she was Mrs. Waule found it good to be there every day for hours, without other calculable occupation than that of observing the cunning Mary Garth (who was so deep that she could be found out in nothing) and giving occasional dry wrinkly indications of crying—­ as if capable of torrents in a wetter season—­at the thought that they were not allowed to go into Mr. Featherstone’s room.  For the old man’s dislike of his own family seemed to get stronger as he got less able to amuse himself by saying biting things to them.  Too languid to sting, he had the more venom refluent in his blood.

Not fully believing the message sent through Mary Garth, they had presented themselves together within the door of the bedroom, both in black—­Mrs. Waule having a white handkerchief partially unfolded in her hand—­and both with faces in a sort of half-mourning purple; while Mrs. Vincy with her pink cheeks and pink ribbons flying was actually administering a cordial to their own brother, and the light-complexioned Fred, his short hair curling as might be expected in a gambler’s, was lolling at his ease in a large chair.

Old Featherstone no sooner caught sight of these funereal figures appearing in spite of his orders than rage came to strengthen him more successfully than the cordial.  He was propped up on a bed-rest, and always had his gold-headed stick lying by him.  He seized it now and swept it backwards and forwards in as large an area as he could, apparently to ban these ugly spectres, crying in a hoarse sort of screech—­