Even those neighbors who had called Peter Featherstone an old fox,
had never accused him of being insincerely polite, and his sister
was quite used to the peculiar absence of ceremony with which he
marked his sense of blood-relationship. Indeed, she herself was
accustomed to think that entire freedom from the necessity of behaving
agreeably was included in the Almighty's intentions about families.
She rose slowly without any sign of resentment, and said in her
usual muffled monotone, "Brother, I hope the new doctor will be
able to do something for you. Solomon says there's great talk
of his cleverness. I'm sure it's my wish you should be spared.
And there's none more ready to nurse you than your own sister
and your own nieces, if you'd only say the word. There's Rebecca,
and Joanna, and Elizabeth, you know."

"Ay, ay, I remember--you'll see I've remembered 'em all--all
dark and ugly. They'd need have some money, eh? There never was
any beauty in the women of our family; but the Featherstones have
always had some money, and the Waules too. Waule had money too.
A warm man was Waule. Ay, ay; money's a good egg; and if you
've got money to leave behind you, lay it in a warm nest.
Good-by, Mrs. Waule." Here Mr. Featherstone pulled at both sides
of his wig as if he wanted to deafen himself, and his sister went
away ruminating on this oracular speech of his. Notwithstanding her
jealousy of the Vincys and of Mary Garth, there remained as the
nethermost sediment in her mental shallows a persuasion that her
brother Peter Featherstone could never leave his chief property
away from his blood-relations:--else, why had the Almighty carried
off his two wives both childless, after he had gained so much
by manganese and things, turning up when nobody expected it?--and