Crull to buy the best
house in Twenty-third street, and take the second best pew in a
fashionable church, thereby placing Mrs. Crull at once within the
charmed circle of society.
As for himself, Mr. Crull took very little interest in society, having
observed that society had taken very little interest in him until that
"lucky turn in terbacker." Mrs. Crull would smile, and confess that
society had claims upon people, and that, when one is in Rome, one must
do as the Romans do. The moral of which proverb was, that Mr. Crull
ought to improve his speech. Mr. Crull replied, by asking "wot
difference 'twould make a hunderd years from now?" Which observation,
when Mr. Crull condescended to speak at such length, was a favorite
argument with him. But he little suspected his wife's secret.
CHAPTER VI.
BRANCHING OUT.
To Miss Pillbody, this quiet little arrangement proved a fortune indeed.
In two weeks after she became acquainted with her benefactress, she was
rich enough to take lodgings for her mother and herself at a decent
boarding house. The old lady entertained singular notions about the
rights of relationship, and held that it was the duty of her husband's
brothers to give them a home for the balance of their lives, and
regarded her daughter's desire to cut loose from her uncles, and be
independent, as a romantic and absurd notion, born of novel reading, to
which Miss Pillbody was a good deal addicted.
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