“I can believe a good deal,” returned the stately Abbey, “so I’ll try to believe that too, Lizzie.”

No supper did Miss Potterson take that night, and only half her usual tumbler of hot Port Negus. And the female domestics⁠—two robust sisters, with staring black eyes, shining flat red faces, blunt noses, and strong black curls, like dolls⁠—interchanged the sentiment that Missis had had her hair combed the wrong way by somebody. And the potboy afterwards remarked, that he hadn’t been “so rattled to bed,” since his late mother had systematically accelerated his retirement to rest with a poker.