Oliver took it as no particular compliment to him that the Miss Polleys should be induced to stay at home when he was a visitor. Common hospitality—of which their class was by no means deficient, required it of all or some of them. And it seemed to the young man that any variety must be welcome in the atmosphere—the intellectual stagnation of which was equal to its literal oppressiveness—laden as it was with the odours, from the shop, of cheese, sugar, and coffee. Mrs. Polley—the presiding genius—when she was to be seen in private life, for she was sometimes detained at the close of a busy day in the shop, suffered from the fatigue consequent on the day’s labours, and although she was always equal to an exertion, and roused herself to brandish and snap her fingers figuratively and in a friendly—well-nigh a playful fashion in Oliver’s face, he felt convinced when he or any other stranger was not there, must give herself up to cross-tiredness, to nagging her daughters, and snubbing her husband between fits of the gapes over her knitting, or coarse hemming, and rough and ready darning of household linen. Mr. Polley, who was not regarded as company worth counting, by his own children any more than by the rest of the world, did no more than contribute the dreariest platitudes and the stalest incidents from his second day’s newspaper, to the feast of reason and the flow of soul. There grew to be a merit in the girls’ persistent giggles and in the light-hearted empty chatter and idle gossip, pointed by personalities and spiced by scandal, with which they stirred the heaviness, and the absence of all dignity and beauty, from which Oliver was not astonished that they made their escape, when they had the opportunity. The Polleys had another sitting-room besides that behind the shop, a best parlour or drawing-room as the girls liked to call it, in which they sometimes sat with their hands crossed in their laps, or engaged in fancy-work, entertaining company. But as Oliver chose to come to them in the character of a family friend, a distinction which they appreciated, Mrs. Polley overruled her daughters’ objections and elected that he should be received in the ordinary family room.