Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then unlocked the wardrobe, with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet after sheet of silver paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have preferred something more strikingly preternatural. But few things could have been more impressive to Mrs Tulliver. She looked all round it in silence for some moments, and then said emphatically, “Well, sister, I’ll never speak against the full crowns again!” It was a great concession, and Mrs Pullet felt it; she felt something was due to it. “You’d like to see it on, sister?” she said sadly. “I’ll open the shutter a bit further.” “Well, if you don’t mind taking off your cap, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver. Mrs Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a jutting promontory of curls which was common to the more mature and judicious women of those times, and placing the bonnet on her head, turned slowly round, like a draper’s lay-figure, that Mrs Tulliver might miss no point of view. “I’ve sometimes thought there’s a loop too much o’ ribbon on this left side, sister; what do you think?” said Mrs Pullet. Mrs Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned her head on one side. “Well, I think it’s best as it is; if you meddled with it, sister, you might repent.” “That’s true,” said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and looking at it contemplatively. “How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting a humble imitation of this _chef-d’œuvre_ made from a piece of silk she had at home. Mrs Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered, “Pullet pays for it; he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum Church, let the next best be whose it would.” She began slowly to adjust the trimmings, in preparation for returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook her head. “Ah,” she said at last, “I may never wear it twice, sister; who knows?” “Don’t talk o’ that sister,” answered Mrs Tulliver. “I hope you’ll have your health this summer.” “Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon after I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we can’t think o’ wearing crape less nor half a year for him.” “That _would_ be unlucky,” said Mrs Tulliver, entering thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. “There’s never so much pleasure i’ wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the crowns are so chancy,—never two summers alike.”