The widow shook her head with a dreary air of superior wisdom. “From what Mrs. Shepherd tells me”--and the words were said in one of those ominous whispers that are intended to imply even more of knowledge than is expressed--“from what Mrs. Shepherd says, there’s no coming of age yet awhile for the air aperient of Gillingham. There’s something out of the common, it appears, though what it is Mrs. Shepherd couldn’t speak to exactly, in the last entail. Anyway, milady--which seems odd, don’t it? she having been the heiress--hasn’t got, after a certain day--that’s pos--anything to do with the estate and property. It’s that, folks say--them as knows something about the matter--as puts her out so. And it’s to be, some says, when Mr. Arthur is five-and-twenty that his mamma will have to walk out of her own house like a private person, after all the money and land that she was born to.” “Let milady alone,” put in Mrs. Tam decidedly; “she’ll be rich enough, if all’s true, whatever happens. There’s a pretty long purse a-filling somewhere, I’ll be bound. It’s little besides her name that she gives to all them mad-houses and county ’ospittles that there’s such a talk about. No, no; Milady Millicent isn’t one to be short of cash, whoever else goes to the wall--but,” interrupting herself, “my gracious! Jane Thwaytes, if there ain’t two parties a-waiting in the shop, and no one in life to serve them but Esther!” Startled by this appeal to her love of gain and order, the widow, after a hurried wipe of her lips with the corner of her apron, bustled into the adjoining shop with a sharp rebuke already on her tongue. It was a tidy and very prosperous establishment that of which Esther Thwaytes was the prop and mainstay. In it you could obtain all that the heart of a reasonable woman of simple tastes and habits ought to desire. On one side, the counter was strewed with cheap ribbons, snowy cap-fronts, artificial flowers more gaudy than artistic, with occasionally a tempting novelty in the shape of the last new thing in bonnets. The other side of the widow’s flourishing “store” contained goods that were more useful than ornamental. Tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff, together with other articles of home and colonial produce, were procurable at “the” shop in the main street of Switcham. As a matter of course, the widow, enjoying the benefit of a monopoly, drove a thriving trade; and, equally as a matter of course, incessant were her jeremiads on the disjointedness of the times, the dearness of provisions, the iniquity of subordinates, and the general decadence of all things since the days which she was pleased to call “her time.” And yet, at scarcely any hour of the day from the early hour of opening was the little shop devoid of customers; while towards the witching time of evening, and that more especially on a Saturday night (for the widow was no advocate for early closing), her house was one, it may be said, of “call”--a regular