Page:Eliot - Middlemarch, vol. IV, 1872.djvu/171

Rh Dollop; "and a far personabler man, by what I can hear. As I said when Mr Baldwin, the tax-gatherer, comes in, a-standing where you sit, and says, 'Bulstrode got all his money as he brought into this town by thieving and swindling,'—I said, 'You don't make me no wiser, Mr Baldwin: it's set my blood a-creeping to look at him ever sin' here he came into Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my head: folks don't look the colour o' the dough-tub and stare at you as if they wanted to see into your backbone for nothingk.' That was what I said, and Mr Baldwin can bear me witness."

"And in the rights of it too," said Mr Crabbe. "For by what I can make out, this Raffles, as they call him, was a lusty, fresh-coloured man as you'd wish to see, and the best o' company—though dead he lies in Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can understan', there's them knows more than they should know about how he got there."

"I'll believe you!" said Mrs Dallop, with a touch of scorn at Mr Crabbe's apparent dimness. "When a man's been 'ticed to a lone house, and there's them can pay for hospitals and nurses for half the country-side choose to be sitters-up night and day, and nobody to come near but a doctor