The Mill on the Floss

Chapter 3

The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-frill, taking his

brandy-and-water so pleasantly with his good friend Tulliver, is Mr.

Riley, a gentleman with a waxen complexion and fat hands, rather

highly educated for an auctioneer and appraiser, but large-hearted

enough to show a great deal of _bonhomie_ toward simple country

acquaintances of hospitable habits. Mr. Riley spoke of such

acquaintances kindly as "people of the old school."

The conversation had come to a pause. Mr. Tulliver, not without a

particular reason, had abstained from a seventh recital of the cool

retort by which Riley had shown himself too many for Dix, and how

Wakem had had his comb cut for once in his life, now the business of

the dam had been settled by arbitration, and how there never would

have been any dispute at all about the height of water if everybody

was what they should be, and Old Harry hadn't made the lawyers.

Mr. Tulliver was, on the whole, a man of safe traditional opinions;

but on one or two points he had trusted to his unassisted intellect,

and had arrived at several questionable conclusions; amongst the rest,

that rats, weevils, and lawyers were created by Old Harry. Unhappily

he had no one to tell him that this was rampant Manich****, else he

might have seen his error. But to-day it was clear that the good

principle was triumphant: this affair of the water-power had been a

tangled business somehow, for all it seemed--look at it one way--as

plain as water's water; but, big a puzzle as it was, it hadn't got the

better of Riley. Mr. Tulliver took his brandy-and-water a little

stronger than usual, and, for a man who might be supposed to have a

few hundreds lying idle at his banker's, was rather incautiously open

in expressing his high estimate of his friend's business talents.

But the dam was a subject of conversation that would keep; it could

always be taken up again at the same point, and exactly in the same

condition; and there was another subject, as you know, on which Mr.

Tulliver was in pressing want of Mr. Riley's advice. This was his

particular reason for remaining silent for a short space after his

last draught, and rubbing his knees in a meditative manner. He was not

a man to make an abrupt transition. This was a puzzling world, as he

often said, and if you drive your wagon in a hurry, you may light on

an awkward corner. Mr. Riley, meanwhile, was not impatient. Why should

he be? Even Hotspur, one would think, must have been patient in his

slippers on a warm hearth, taking copious snuff, and sipping

gratuitous brandy-and-water.

"There's a thing I've got i' my head," said Mr. Tulliver at last, in

rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his head and looked

steadfastly at his companion.

"Ah!" said Mr. Riley, in a tone of mild interest. He was a man with

heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same

under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and the habit of

taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly

oracular to Mr. Tulliver.

"It's a very particular thing," he went on; "it's about my boy Tom."

At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was seated on a low stool close

by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her heavy hair

back and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that roused Maggie

when she was dreaming over her book, but Tom's name served as well as

the shrillest whistle; in an instant she was on the watch, with

gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mischief, or at all

events determined to fly at any one who threatened it toward Tom.

"You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsummer," said Mr.

Tulliver; "he's comin' away from the 'cademy at Lady-day, an' I shall

let him run loose for a quarter; but after that I want to send him to

a downright good school, where they'll make a scholard of him."

"Well," said Mr. Riley, "there's no greater advantage you can give him

than a good education. Not," he added, with polite significance,--"not

that a man can't be an excellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd,

sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the

schoolmaster."

"I believe you," said Mr. Tulliver, winking, and turning his head on

one side; "but that's where it is. I don't _mean_ Tom to be a miller

and farmer. I see no fun i' that. Why, if I made him a miller an'

farmer, he'd be expectin' to take to the mill an' the land, an'

a-hinting at me as it was time for me to lay by an' think o' my latter

end. Nay, nay, I've seen enough o' that wi' sons. I'll never pull my

coat off before I go to bed. I shall give Tom an eddication an' put

him to a business, as he may make a nest for himself, an' not want to

push me out o' mine. Pretty well if he gets it when I'm dead an' gone.

I sha'n't be put off wi' spoon-meat afore I've lost my teeth."

This was evidently a point on which Mr. Tulliver felt strongly; and

the impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis to his

speech showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterward in a

defiant motion of the head from side to side, and an occasional "Nay,

nay," like a subsiding growl.

These angry symptoms were keenly observed by Maggie, and cut her to

the quick. Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his

father out of doors, and of making the future in some way tragic by

his wickedness. This was not to be borne; and Maggie jumped up from

her stool, forgetting all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang

within the fender, and going up between her father's knees, said, in a

half-crying, half-indignant voice,--

"Father, Tom wouldn't be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn't."

Mrs. Tulliver was out of the room superintending a choice supper-dish,

and Mr. Tulliver's heart was touched; so Maggie was not scolded about

the book. Mr. Riley quietly picked it up and looked at it, while the

father laughed, with a certain tenderness in his hard-lined face, and

patted his little girl on the back, and then held her hands and kept

her between his knees.

"What! they mustn't say any harm o' Tom, eh?" said Mr. Tulliver,

looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice,

turning to Mr. Riley, as though Maggie couldn't hear, "She understands

what one's talking about so as never was. And you should hear her

read,--straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at

her book! But it's bad--it's bad," Mr. Tulliver added sadly, checking

this blamable exultation. "A woman's no business wi' being so clever;

it'll turn to trouble, I doubt. But bless you!"--here the exultation

was clearly recovering the mastery,--"she'll read the books and

understand 'em better nor half the folks as are growed up."

Maggie's cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement. She thought

Mr. Riley would have a respect for her now; it had been evident that

he thought nothing of her before.

Mr. Riley was turning over the leaves of the book, and she could make

nothing of his face, with its high-arched eyebrows; but he presently

looked at her, and said,--

"Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some

pictures,--I want to know what they mean."

Maggie, with deepening color, went without hesitation to Mr. Riley's

elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and

tossing back her mane, while she said,--

"Oh, I'll tell you what that means. It's a dreadful picture, isn't it?

But I can't help looking at it. That old woman in the water's a

witch,--they've put her in to find out whether she's a witch or no;

and if she swims she's a witch, and if she's drowned--and killed, you

know--she's innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old

woman. But what good would it do her then, you know, when she was

drowned? Only, I suppose, she'd go to heaven, and God would make it up

to her. And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo,

laughing,--oh, isn't he ugly?--I'll tell you what he is. He's the

Devil _really_" (here Maggie's voice became louder and more emphatic),

"and not a right blacksmith; for the Devil takes the shape of wicked

men, and walks about and sets people doing wicked things, and he's

oftener in the shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know,

if people saw he was the Devil, and he roared at 'em, they'd run away,

and he couldn't make 'em do what he pleased."

Mr. Tulliver had listened to this exposition of Maggie's with

petrifying wonder.

"Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?" he burst out at

last.

"The 'History of the Devil,' by Daniel Defoe,--not quite the right

book for a little girl," said Mr. Riley. "How came it among your

books, Mr. Tulliver?"

Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said,--

"Why, it's one o' the books I bought at Partridge's sale. They was all

bound alike,--it's a good binding, you see,--and I thought they'd be

all good books. There's Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying' among

'em. I read in it often of a Sunday" (Mr. Tulliver felt somehow a

familiarity with that great writer, because his name was Jeremy); "and

there's a lot more of 'em,--sermons mostly, I think,--but they've all

got the same covers, and I thought they were all o' one sample, as you

may say. But it seems one mustn't judge by th' outside. This is a

puzzlin' world."

"Well," said Mr. Riley, in an admonitory, patronizing tone as he

patted Maggie on the head, "I advise you to put by the 'History of the

Devil,' and read some prettier book. Have you no prettier books?"

"Oh, yes," said Maggie, reviving a little in the desire to vindicate

the variety of her reading. "I know the reading in this book isn't

pretty; but I like the pictures, and I make stories to the pictures

out of my own head, you know. But I've got Aesop's Fables, and a book

about Kangaroos and things, and the Pilgrim's Progress."

"Ah, a beautiful book," said Mr. Riley; "you can't read a better."

"Well, but there's a great deal about the Devil in that," said Maggie,

triumphantly, "and I'll show you the picture of him in his true shape,

as he fought with Christian."

Maggie ran in an instant to the corner of the room, jumped on a chair,

and reached down from the small bookcase a shabby old copy of Bunyan,

which opened at once, without the least trouble of search, at the

picture she wanted.

"Here he is," she said, running back to Mr. Riley, "and Tom colored

him for me with his paints when he was at home last holidays,--the

body all black, you know, and the eyes red, like fire, because he's

all fire inside, and it shines out at his eyes."

"Go, go!" said Mr. Tulliver, peremptorily, beginning to feel rather

uncomfortable at these free remarks on the personal appearance of a

being powerful enough to create lawyers; "shut up the book, and let's

hear no more o' such talk. It is as I thought--the child 'ull learn

more mischief nor good wi' the books. Go, go and see after your

mother."

Maggie shut up the book at once, with a sense of disgrace, but not

being inclined to see after her mother, she compromised the matter by

going into a dark corner behind her father's chair, and nursing her

doll, toward which she had an occasional fit of fondness in Tom's

absence, neglecting its toilet, but lavishing so many warm kisses on

it that the waxen cheeks had a wasted, unhealthy appearance.

"Did you ever hear the like on't?" said Mr. Tulliver, as Maggie

retired. "It's a pity but what she'd been the lad,--she'd ha' been a

match for the lawyers, _she_ would. It's the wonderful'st thing"--here

he lowered his voice--"as I picked the mother because she wasn't o'er

'cute--bein' a good-looking woman too, an' come of a rare family for

managing; but I picked her from her sisters o' purpose, 'cause she was

a bit weak like; for I wasn't agoin' to be told the rights o' things

by my own fireside. But you see when a man's got brains himself,

there's no knowing where they'll run to; an' a pleasant sort o' soft

woman may go on breeding you stupid lads and 'cute wenches, till it's

like as if the world was turned topsy-turvy. It's an uncommon puzzlin'

thing."

Mr. Riley's gravity gave way, and he shook a little under the

application of his pinch of snuff before he said,--

"But your lad's not stupid, is he? I saw him, when I was here last,

busy making fishing-tackle; he seemed quite up to it."

"Well, he isn't not to say stupid,--he's got a notion o' things out o'

door, an' a sort o' common sense, as he'd lay hold o' things by the

right handle. But he's slow with his tongue, you see, and he reads but

poorly, and can't abide the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me,

an' as shy as can be wi' strangers, an' you never hear him say 'cute

things like the little wench. Now, what I want is to send him to a

school where they'll make him a bit nimble with his tongue and his

pen, and make a smart chap of him. I want my son to be even wi' these

fellows as have got the start o' me with having better schooling. Not

but what, if the world had been left as God made it, I could ha' seen

my way, and held my own wi' the best of 'em; but things have got so

twisted round and wrapped up i' unreasonable words, as aren't a bit

like 'em, as I'm clean at fault, often an' often. Everything winds

about so--the more straightforrad you are, the more you're puzzled."

Mr. Tulliver took a draught, swallowed it slowly, and shook his head

in a melancholy manner, conscious of exemplifying the truth that a

perfectly sane intellect is hardly at home in this insane world.

"You're quite in the right of it, Tulliver," observed Mr. Riley.

"Better spend an extra hundred or two on your son's education, than

leave it him in your will. I know I should have tried to do so by a

son of mine, if I'd had one, though, God knows, I haven't your ready

money to play with, Tulliver; and I have a houseful of daughters into

the bargain."

"I dare say, now, you know of a school as 'ud be just the thing for

Tom," said Mr. Tulliver, not diverted from his purpose by any sympathy

with Mr. Riley's deficiency of ready cash.

Mr. Riley took a pinch of snuff, and kept Mr. Tulliver in suspense by

a silence that seemed deliberative, before he said,--

"I know of a very fine chance for any one that's got the necessary

money and that's what you have, Tulliver. The fact is, I wouldn't

recommend any friend of mine to send a boy to a regular school, if he

could afford to do better. But if any one wanted his boy to get

superior instruction and training, where he would be the companion of

his master, and that master a first rate fellow, I know his man. I

wouldn't mention the chance to everybody, because I don't think

everybody would succeed in getting it, if he were to try; but I

mention it to you, Tulliver, between ourselves."

The fixed inquiring glance with which Mr. Tulliver had been watching

his friend's oracular face became quite eager.

"Ay, now, let's hear," he said, adjusting himself in his chair with

the complacency of a person who is thought worthy of important

communications.

"He's an Oxford man," said Mr. Riley, sententiously, shutting his

mouth close, and looking at Mr. Tulliver to observe the effect of this

stimulating information.

"What! a parson?" said Mr. Tulliver, rather doubtfully.

"Yes, and an M.A. The bishop, I understand, thinks very highly of him:

why, it was the bishop who got him his present curacy."

"Ah?" said Mr. Tulliver, to whom one thing was as wonderful as another

concerning these unfamiliar phenomena. "But what can he want wi' Tom,

then?"

"Why, the fact is, he's fond of teaching, and wishes to keep up his

studies, and a clergyman has but little opportunity for that in his

parochial duties. He's willing to take one or two boys as pupils to

fill up his time profitably. The boys would be quite of the

family,--the finest thing in the world for them; under Stelling's eye

continually."

"But do you think they'd give the poor lad twice o' pudding?" said

Mrs. Tulliver, who was now in her place again. "He's such a boy for

pudding as never was; an' a growing boy like that,--it's dreadful to

think o' their stintin' him."

"And what money 'ud he want?" said Mr. Tulliver, whose instinct told

him that the services of this admirable M.A. would bear a high price.

"Why, I know of a clergyman who asks a hundred and fifty with his

youngest pupils, and he's not to be mentioned with Stelling, the man I

speak of. I know, on good authority, that one of the chief people at

Oxford said, Stelling might get the highest honors if he chose. But he

didn't care about university honors; he's a quiet man--not noisy."

"Ah, a deal better--a deal better," said Mr. Tulliver; "but a hundred

and fifty's an uncommon price. I never thought o' paying so much as

that."

"A good education, let me tell you, Tulliver,--a good education is

cheap at the money. But Stelling is moderate in his terms; he's not a

grasping man. I've no doubt he'd take your boy at a hundred, and

that's what you wouldn't get many other clergymen to do. I'll write to

him about it, if you like."

Mr. Tulliver rubbed his knees, and looked at the carpet in a

meditative manner.

"But belike he's a bachelor," observed Mrs. Tulliver, in the interval;

"an' I've no opinion o' housekeepers. There was my brother, as is dead

an' gone, had a housekeeper once, an' she took half the feathers out

o' the best bed, an' packed 'em up an' sent 'em away. An' it's unknown

the linen she made away with--Stott her name was. It 'ud break my

heart to send Tom where there's a housekeeper, an' I hope you won't

think of it, Mr. Tulliver."

"You may set your mind at rest on that score, Mrs. Tulliver," said Mr.

Riley, "for Stelling is married to as nice a little woman as any man

need wish for a wife. There isn't a kinder little soul in the world; I

know her family well. She has very much your complexion,--light curly

hair. She comes of a good Mudport family, and it's not every offer

that would have been acceptable in that quarter. But Stelling's not an

every-day man; rather a particular fellow as to the people he chooses

to be connected with. But I _think_ he would have no objection to take

your son; I _think_ he would not, on my representation."

"I don't know what he could have _against_ the lad," said Mrs.

Tulliver, with a slight touch of motherly indignation; "a nice

fresh-skinned lad as anybody need wish to see."

"But there's one thing I'm thinking on," said Mr. Tulliver, turning

his head on one side and looking at Mr. Riley, after a long perusal of

the carpet. "Wouldn't a parson be almost too high-learnt to bring up a

lad to be a man o' business? My notion o' the parsons was as they'd

got a sort o' learning as lay mostly out o' sight. And that isn't what

I want for Tom. I want him to know figures, and write like print, and

see into things quick, and know what folks mean, and how to wrap

things up in words as aren't actionable. It's an uncommon fine thing,

that is," concluded Mr. Tulliver, shaking his head, "when you can let

a man know what you think of him without paying for it."

"Oh, my dear Tulliver," said Mr. Riley, "you're quite under a mistake

about the clergy; all the best schoolmasters are of the clergy. The

schoolmasters who are not clergymen are a very low set of men

generally."

"Ay, that Jacobs is, at the 'cademy," interposed Mr. Tulliver.

"To be sure,--men who have failed in other trades, most likely. Now, a

clergyman is a gentleman by profession and education; and besides

that, he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and prepare him for

entering on any career with credit. There may be some clergymen who

are mere bookmen; but you may depend upon it, Stelling is not one of

them,--a man that's wide awake, let me tell you. Drop him a hint, and

that's enough. You talk of figures, now; you have only to say to

Stelling, 'I want my son to be a thorough arithmetician,' and you may

leave the rest to him."

Mr. Riley paused a moment, while Mr. Tulliver, some-what reassured as

to clerical tutorship, was inwardly rehearsing to an imaginary Mr.

Stelling the statement, "I want my son to know 'rethmetic."

"You see, my dear Tulliver," Mr. Riley continued, "when you get a

thoroughly educated man, like Stelling, he's at no loss to take up any

branch of instruction. When a workman knows the use of his tools, he

can make a door as well as a window."

"Ay, that's true," said Mr. Tulliver, almost convinced now that the

clergy must be the best of schoolmasters.

"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do for you," said Mr. Riley, "and I

wouldn't do it for everybody. I'll see Stelling's father-in-law, or

drop him a line when I get back to Mudport, to say that you wish to

place your boy with his son-in-law, and I dare say Stelling will write

to you, and send you his terms."

"But there's no hurry, is there?" said Mrs. Tulliver; "for I hope, Mr.

Tulliver, you won't let Tom begin at his new school before Midsummer.

He began at the 'cademy at the Lady-day quarter, and you see what

good's come of it."

"Ay, ay, Bessy, never brew wi' bad malt upo' Michael-masday, else

you'll have a poor tap," said Mr. Tulliver, winking and smiling at Mr.

Riley, with the natural pride of a man who has a buxom wife

conspicuously his inferior in intellect. "But it's true there's no

hurry; you've hit it there, Bessy."

"It might be as well not to defer the arrangement too long," said Mr.

Riley, quietly, "for Stelling may have propositions from other

parties, and I know he would not take more than two or three boarders,

if so many. If I were you, I think I would enter on the subject with

Stelling at once: there's no necessity for sending the boy before

Midsummer, but I would be on the safe side, and make sure that nobody

forestalls you."

"Ay, there's summat in that," said Mr. Tulliver.

"Father," broke in Maggie, who had stolen unperceived to her father's

elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll

topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the

chair,--"father, is it a long way off where Tom is to go? Sha'n't we

ever go to see him?"

"I don't know, my wench," said the father, tenderly. "Ask Mr. Riley;

he knows."

Maggie came round promptly in front of Mr. Riley, and said, "How far

is it, please, sir?"

"Oh, a long, long way off," that gentleman answered, being of opinion

that children, when they are not naughty, should always be spoken to

jocosely. "You must borrow the seven-leagued boots to get to him."

"That's nonsense!" said Maggie, tossing her head haughtily, and

turning away, with the tears springing in her eyes. She began to

dislike Mr. Riley; it was evident he thought her silly and of no

consequence.

"Hush, Maggie! for shame of you, asking questions and chattering,"

said her mother. "Come and sit down on your little stool, and hold

your tongue, do. But," added Mrs. Tulliver, who had her own alarm

awakened, "is it so far off as I couldn't wash him and mend him?"

"About fifteen miles; that's all," said Mr. Riley. "You can drive

there and back in a day quite comfortably. Or--Stelling is a

hospitable, pleasant man--he'd be glad to have you stay."

"But it's too far off for the linen, I doubt," said Mrs. Tulliver,

sadly.

The entrance of supper opportunely adjourned this difficulty, and

relieved Mr. Riley from the labor of suggesting some solution or

compromise,--a labor which he would otherwise doubtless have

undertaken; for, as you perceive, he was a man of very obliging

manners. And he had really given himself the trouble of recommending

Mr. Stelling to his friend Tulliver without any positive expectation

of a solid, definite advantage resulting to himself, notwithstanding

the subtle indications to the contrary which might have misled a

too-sagacious observer. For there is nothing more widely misleading

than sagacity if it happens to get on a wrong scent; and sagacity,

persuaded that men usually act and speak from distinct motives, with a

consciously proposed end in view, is certain to waste its energies on

imaginary game.

Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass

a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist:

they demand too intense a mental action for many of our

fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil

the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can do

it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for

which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small

extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised

insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small

family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to

satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next

year's crop.

Mr. Riley was a man of business, and not cold toward his own interest,

yet even he was more under the influence of small promptings than of

far-sighted designs. He had no private understanding with the Rev.

Walter Stelling; on the contrary, he knew very little of that M.A. and

his acquirements,--not quite enough, perhaps, to warrant so strong a

recommendation of him as he had given to his friend Tulliver. But he

believed Mr. Stelling to be an excellent classic, for Gadsby had said

so, and Gadsby's first cousin was an Oxford tutor; which was better

ground for the belief even than his own immediate observation would

have been, for though Mr. Riley had received a tincture of the

classics at the great Mudport Free School, and had a sense of

understanding Latin generally, his comprehension of any particular

Latin was not ready. Doubtless there remained a subtle aroma from his

juvenile contact with the "De Senectute" and the fourth book of the

"*****," but it had ceased to be distinctly recognizable as classical,

and was only perceived in the higher finish and force of his

auctioneering style. Then, Stelling was an Oxford man, and the Oxford

men were always--no, no, it was the Cambridge men who were always good

mathematicians. But a man who had had a university education could

teach anything he liked; especially a man like Stelling, who had made

a speech at a Mudport dinner on a political occasion, and had

acquitted himself so well that it was generally remarked, this

son-in-law of Timpson's was a sharp fellow. It was to be expected of a

Mudport man, from the parish of St. Ursula, that he would not omit to

do a good turn to a son-in-law of Timpson's, for Timpson was one of

the most useful and influential men in the parish, and had a good deal

of business, which he knew how to put into the right hands. Mr. Riley

liked such men, quite apart from any money which might be diverted,

through their good judgment, from less worthy pockets into his own;

and it would be a satisfaction to him to say to Timpson on his return

home, "I've secured a good pupil for your son-in-law." Timpson had a

large family of daughters; Mr. Riley felt for him; besides, Louisa

Timpson's face, with its light curls, had been a familiar object to

him over the pew wainscot on a Sunday for nearly fifteen years; it was

natural her husband should be a commendable tutor. Moreover, Mr. Riley

knew of no other schoolmaster whom he had any ground for recommending

in preference; why, then, should be not recommend Stelling? His friend

Tulliver had asked him for an opinion; it is always chilling, in

friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give. And if you

deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an

air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in

uttering it, and naturally get fond of it. Thus Mr. Riley, knowing no

harm of Stelling to begin with, and wishing him well, so far as he had

any wishes at all concerning him, had no sooner recommended him than

he began to think with admiration of a man recommended on such high

authority, and would soon have gathered so warm an interest on the

subject, that if Mr. Tulliver had in the end declined to send Tom to

Stelling, Mr. Riley would have thought his "friend of the old school"

a thoroughly pig-headed fellow.

If you blame Mr. Riley very severely for giving a recommendation on

such slight grounds, I must say you are rather hard upon him. Why

should an auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago, who had as good

as forgotten his free-school Latin, be expected to manifest a delicate

scrupulosity which is not always exhibited by gentlemen of the learned

professions, even in our present advanced stage of morality?

Besides, a man with the milk of human kindness in him can scarcely

abstain from doing a good-natured action, and one cannot be

good-natured all round. Nature herself occasionally quarters an

inconvenient parasite on an animal toward whom she has otherwise no

ill will. What then? We admire her care for the parasite. If Mr. Riley

had shrunk from giving a recommendation that was not based on valid

evidence, he would not have helped Mr. Stelling to a paying pupil, and

that would not have been so well for the reverend gentleman. Consider,

too, that all the pleasant little dim ideas and complacencies--of

standing well with Timpson, of dispensing advice when he was asked for

it, of impressing his friend Tulliver with additional respect, of

saying something, and saying it emphatically, with other inappreciably

minute ingredients that went along with the warm hearth and the

brandy-and-water to make up Mr. Riley's consciousness on this

occasion--would have been a mere blank.