the windows, carpenters who had been employed in
the various preparations, alterations, and repairs, made confidential
statements to the different maid-servants in the row, relative to the
magnificent scale on which the Miss Willises were commencing; the
maid-servants told their 'Missises,' the Missises told their friends, and
vague rumours were circulated throughout the parish, that No. 25, in
Gordon-place, had been taken by four maiden ladies of immense property.

At last, the Miss Willises moved in; and then the 'calling' began. The
house was the perfection of neatness--so were the four Miss Willises.
Everything was formal, stiff, and cold--so were the four Miss Willises.
Not a single chair of the whole set was ever seen out of its place--not a
single Miss Willis of the whole four was ever seen out of hers. There
they always sat, in the same places, doing precisely the same things at
the same hour. The eldest Miss Willis used to knit, the second to draw,
the two others to play duets on the piano. They seemed to have no
separate existence, but to have made up their minds just to winter
through life together. They were three long graces in drapery, with the
addition, like a school-dinner, of another long grace afterwards--the
three fates with another sister--the Siamese twins multiplied by two.
The eldest Miss Willis grew bilious--the four Miss Willises grew bilious
immediately. The eldest Miss Willis grew ill-tempered and religious--the
four Miss Willises were ill-tempered and religious directly. Whatever
the eldest did, the others did, and whatever anybody else did, they all
disapproved of; and thus they vegetated--living in Polar harmony among
themselves, and, as they sometimes went out, or saw company 'in a
quiet-way' at home, occasionally icing the neighbours. Three years
passed over in this way, when an unlooked for and extraordinary
phenomenon occurred. The Miss Willises showed symptoms of summer, the
frost gradually broke up; a complete thaw took place. Was it possible?
one of the four Miss Willises was going to be married!

Now, where on earth the husband came from, by what feelings the poor man
could have been actuated, or by what process of reasoning the four Miss
Willises succeeded in persuading themselves that it was possible for a
man to marry one of them, without marrying them all, are questions too
profound for us to resolve: certain it is, however, that the visits of
Mr. Robinson (a gentlema