Page:Eliot - Middlemarch, vol. IV, 1872.djvu/172

162 as is known to stick at nothingk, and as poor as he can hang together, and after that so flush o' money as he can pay off Mr Byles the butcher as his bill has been running on for the best o' joints since last Michaelmas was a twelvemonth—I don't want anybody to come and tell me as there's been more going on nor the Prayer-book's got a service for—I don't want to stand winking and blinking and thinking."

Mrs Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady accustomed to dominate her company. There was a chorus of adhesion from the more courageous; but Mr Limp, after taking a draught, placed his flat hands together and pressed them hard between his knees, looking down at them with blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they could be brought round again by further moisture.

"Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the Crowner?" said the dyer. "It's been done many and many's the time. If there's been foul play they might find it out."

"Not they, Mr Jonas!" said Mrs Dollop, emphatically."I know what doctors are. They're a deal too cunning to be found out. And this Doctor Lydgate that's been for cutting up every-