“Tchuh!” said Mr Tulliver. “It takes a big loaf when there’s many to breakfast. What signifies your sisters’ bits o’ money when they’ve got half-a-dozen nevvies and nieces to divide it among? And your sister Deane won’t get ’em to leave all to one, I reckon, and make the country cry shame on ’em when they are dead?” “I don’t know what she won’t get ’em to do,” said Mrs Tulliver, “for my children are so awk’ard wi’ their aunts and uncles. Maggie’s ten times naughtier when they come than she is other days, and Tom doesn’t like ’em, bless him!—though it’s more nat’ral in a boy than a gell. And there’s Lucy Deane’s such a good child,—you may set her on a stool, and there she’ll sit for an hour together, and never offer to get off. I can’t help loving the child as if she was my own; and I’m sure she’s more like _my_ child than sister Deane’s, for she’d allays a very poor colour for one of our family, sister Deane had.” “Well, well, if you’re fond o’ the child, ask her father and mother to bring her with ’em. And won’t you ask their aunt and uncle Moss too, and some o’ _their_ children?” “Oh, dear, Mr Tulliver, why, there’d be eight people besides the children, and I must put two more leaves i’ the table, besides reaching down more o’ the dinner-service; and you know as well as I do as _my_ sisters and _your_ sister don’t suit well together.” “Well, well, do as you like, Bessy,” said Mr Tulliver, taking up his hat and walking out to the mill. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs Tulliver on all points unconnected with her family relations; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed,—as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so well,—not at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries; so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the illness or trouble was the sufferer’s own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household