"Come, come, my wench," said her father, soothingly, putting his arm round her, "never mind; you was i' the right to cut it off if it plagued you; give over crying; father'll take your part."
Delicious words of tenderness! Maggie never forgot any of these moments when her father "took her part"; she kept them in her heart, and thought of them long years after, when every one else said that her father had done very ill by his children.
"How your husband does spoil that child, Bessy!" said Mrs. Glegg, in a loud "aside," to Mrs. Tulliver. "It'll be the ruin of her, if you don't take care. My father never brought his children up so, else we should ha' been a different sort o' family to what we are."
Mrs. Tulliver's domestic sorrows seemed at this moment to have reached the point at which in
