The Mill on the Floss

Chapter 7

The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. Glegg was not

the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs. Tulliver's

arm-chair, no impartial observer could have denied that for a woman of

fifty she had a very comely face and figure, though Tom and Maggie

considered their aunt Glegg as the type of ugliness. It is true she

despised the advantages of costume, for though, as she often observed,

no woman had better clothes, it was not her way to wear her new things

out before her old ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their

best thread-lace in every wash; but when Mrs. Glegg died, it would be

found that she had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer of her

wardrobe in the Spotted Chamber than ever Mrs. Wooll of St. Ogg's had

bought in her life, although Mrs. Wooll wore her lace before it was

paid for. So of her curled fronts: Mrs. Glegg had doubtless the

glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in

various degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the week-day

world from under a crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most

dreamlike and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular.

Occasionally, indeed, Mrs. Glegg wore one of her third-best fronts on

a week-day visit, but not at a sister's house; especially not at Mrs.

Tulliver's, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sister's feelings

greatly by wearing her own hair, though, as Mrs. Glegg observed to

Mrs. Deane, a mother of a family, like Bessy, with a husband always

going to law, might have been expected to know better. But Bessy was

always weak!

So if Mrs. Glegg's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she

had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting

allusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blond curls, separated from

each other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting.

Mrs. Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg's

unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the

consciousness of looking the handsomer for them naturally administered

support. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house

to-day,--united and tilted slightly, of course--a frequent practice of

hers when she was on a visit, and happened to be in a severe humor:

she didn't know what draughts there might be in strange houses. For

the same reason she wore a small sable tippet, which reached just to

her shoulders, and was very far from meeting across her well-formed

chest, while her long neck was protected by a _chevaux-de-frise_ of

miscellaneous frilling. One would need to be learned in the fashions

of those times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Glegg's

slate-colored silk gown must have been; but from certain

constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor about

it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it

belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come

recently into wear.

Mrs. Glegg held her large gold watch in her hand with the many-doubled

chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs. Tulliver, who had just

returned from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might be by

other people's clocks and watches, it was gone half-past twelve by

hers.

"I don't know what ails sister Pullet," she continued. "It used to be

the way in our family for one to be as early as another,--I'm sure it

was so in my poor father's time,--and not for one sister to sit half

an hour before the others came. But if the ways o' the family are

altered, it sha'n't be _my_ fault; _I'll_ never be the one to come

into a house when all the rest are going away. I wonder _at_ sister

Deane,--she used to be more like me. But if you'll take my advice,

Bessy, you'll put the dinner forrard a bit, sooner than put it back,

because folks are late as ought to ha' known better."

"Oh dear, there's no fear but what they'll be all here in time,

sister," said Mrs. Tulliver, in her mild-peevish tone. "The dinner

won't be ready till half-past one. But if it's long for you to wait,

let me fetch you a cheesecake and a glass o' wine."

"Well, Bessy!" said Mrs. Glegg, with a bitter smile and a scarcely

perceptible toss of her head, "I should ha' thought you'd known your

own sister better. I never _did_ eat between meals, and I'm not going

to begin. Not but what I hate that nonsense of having your dinner at

half-past one, when you might have it at one. You was never brought up

in that way, Bessy."

"Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr. Tulliver doesn't like his dinner before

two o'clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o' you."

"Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands,--they're for putting

everything off; they'll put the dinner off till after tea, if they've

got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work; but it's a pity

for you, Bessy, as you haven't got more strength o' mind. It'll be

well if your children don't suffer for it. And I hope you've not gone

and got a great dinner for us,--going to expense for your sisters, as

'ud sooner eat a crust o' dry bread nor help to ruin you with

extravagance. I wonder you don't take pattern by your sister Deane;

she's far more sensible. And here you've got two children to provide

for, and your husband's spent your fortin i' going to law, and's

likely to spend his own too. A boiled joint, as you could make broth

of for the kitchen," Mrs. Glegg added, in a tone of emphatic protest,

"and a plain pudding, with a spoonful o' sugar, and no spice, 'ud be

far more becoming."

With sister Glegg in this humor, there was a cheerful prospect for the

day. Mrs. Tulliver never went the length of quarrelling with her, any

more than a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner

can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones. But this point of

the dinner was a tender one, and not at all new, so that Mrs. Tulliver

could make the same answer she had often made before.

"Mr. Tulliver says he always _will_ have a good dinner for his friends

while he can pay for it," she said; "and he's a right to do as he

likes in his own house, sister."

"Well, Bessy, _I_ can't leave your children enough out o' my savings

to keep 'em from ruin. And you mustn't look to having any o' Mr.

Glegg's money, for it's well if I don't go first,--he comes of a

long-lived family; and if he was to die and leave me well for my life,

he'd tie all the money up to go back to his own kin."

The sound of wheels while Mrs. Glegg was speaking was an interruption

highly welcome to Mrs. Tulliver, who hastened out to receive sister

Pullet; it must be sister Pullet, because the sound was that of a

four-wheel.

Mrs. Glegg tossed her head and looked rather sour about the mouth at

the thought of the "four-wheel." She had a strong opinion on that

subject.

Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before

Mrs. Tulliver's door, and it was apparently requisite that she should

shed a few more before getting out; for though her husband and Mrs.

Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head

sadly, as she looked through her tears at the vague distance.

"Why, whativer is the matter, sister?" said Mrs. Tulliver. She was not

an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the large

toilet-glass in sister Pullet's best bedroom was possibly broken for

the second time.

There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs. Pullet

slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance

at Mr. Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from

injury. Mr. Pullet was a small man, with a high nose, small twinkling

eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white

cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher

principle than that of mere personal ease. He bore about the same

relation to his tall, good-looking wife, with her balloon sleeves,

abundant mantle, and a large befeathered and beribboned bonnet, as a

small fishing-smack bears to a brig with all its sails spread.

It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity

introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization, the

sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow of a

Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with several

bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and delicate ribbon

strings, what a long series of gradations! In the enlightened child of

civilization the abandonment characteristic of grief is checked and

varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an interesting problem

to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and eyes half blinded

by the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too-devious step through

a door-place, she might crush her buckram sleeves too, and the deep

consciousness of this possibility produces a composition of forces by

which she takes a line that just clears the door-post. Perceiving that

the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them

languidly backward, a touching gesture, indicative, even in the

deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will

once more have a charm. As the tears subside a little, and with her

head leaning backward at the angle that will not injure her bonnet,

she endures that terrible moment when grief, which has made all things

else a weariness, has itself become weary; she looks down pensively at

her bracelets, and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studied

fortuity which would be gratifying to her mind if it were once more in

a calm and healthy state.

Mrs. Pullet brushed each door-post with great nicety, about the

latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous

to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across

the shoulders), and having done that sent the muscles of her face in

quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlor where Mrs. Glegg

was seated.

"Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?" said Mrs. Glegg,

rather sharply, as they shook hands.

Mrs. Pullet sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind, before

she answered,--

"She's gone," unconsciously using an impressive figure of rhetoric.

"It isn't the glass this time, then," thought Mrs. Tulliver.

"Died the day before yesterday," continued Mrs. Pullet; "an' her legs

was as thick as my body,"' she added, with deep sadness, after a

pause. "They'd tapped her no end o' times, and the water--they say you

might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked."

"Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoever she may be," said

Mrs. Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally

clear and decided; "but I can't think who you're talking of, for my

part."

"But _I_ know," said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her head; "and

there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as it's old

Mrs. Sutton o' the Twentylands."

"Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance as I've ever

heared of," said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just as much as was

proper when anything happened to her own "kin," but not on other

occasions.

"She's so much acquaintance as I've seen her legs when they was like

bladders. And an old lady as had doubled her money over and over

again, and kept it all in her own management to the last, and had her

pocket with her keys in under her pillow constant. There isn't many

old _par_ish'ners like her, I doubt."

"And they say she'd took as much physic as 'ud fill a wagon," observed

Mr. Pullet.

"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Pullet, "she'd another complaint ever so many years

before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn't make out what it

was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she

said, 'Mrs. Pullet, if ever you have the dropsy, you'll think o' me.'

She _did_ say so," added Mrs. Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again;

"those were her very words. And she's to be buried o' Saturday, and

Pullet's bid to the funeral."

"Sophy," said Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of

rational remonstrance,--"Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and

injuring your health about people as don't belong to you. Your poor

father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o' the

family as I ever heard of. You couldn't fret no more than this, if

we'd heared as our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his

will."

Mrs. Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather

flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. It

was not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their

neighbors who had left them nothing; but Mrs. Pullet had married a

gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and

everything else to the highest pitch of respectability.

"Mrs. Sutton didn't die without making her will, though," said Mr.

Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to sanction

his wife's tears; "ours is a rich parish, but they say there's nobody

else to leave as many thousands behind 'em as Mrs. Sutton. And she's

left no leggicies to speak on,--left it all in a lump to her husband's

nevvy."

"There wasn't much good i' being so rich, then," said Mrs. Glegg, "if

she'd got none but husband's kin to leave it to. It's poor work when

that's all you've got to pinch yourself for. Not as I'm one o' those

as 'ud like to die without leaving more money out at interest than

other folks had reckoned; but it's a poor tale when it must go out o'

your own family."

"I'm sure, sister," said Mrs. Pullet, who had recovered sufficiently

to take off her veil and fold it carefully, "it's a nice sort o' man

as Mrs. Sutton has left her money to, for he's troubled with the

asthmy, and goes to bed every night at eight o'clock. He told me about

it himself--as free as could be--one Sunday when he came to our

church. He wears a hareskin on his chest, and has a trembling in his

talk,--quite a gentleman sort o' man. I told him there wasn't many

months in the year as I wasn't under the doctor's hands. And he said,

'Mrs. Pullet, I can feel for you.' That was what he said,--the very

words. Ah!" sighed Mrs. Pullet, shaking her head at the idea that

there were but few who could enter fully into her experiences in pink

mixture and white mixture, strong stuff in small bottles, and weak

stuff in large bottles, damp boluses at a shilling, and draughts at

eighteenpence. "Sister, I may as well go and take my bonnet off now.

Did you see as the cap-box was put out?" she added, turning to her

husband.

Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and

hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.

"They'll bring it upstairs, sister," said Mrs. Tulliver, wishing to go

at once, lest Mrs. Glegg should begin to explain her feelings about

Sophy's being the first Dodson who ever ruined her constitution with

doctor's stuff.

Mrs. Tulliver was fond of going upstairs with her sister Pullet, and

looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and

discussing millinery in general. This was part of Bessy's weakness

that stirred Mrs. Glegg's sisterly compassion: Bessy went far too well

dressed, considering; and she was too proud to dress her child in the

good clothing her sister Glegg gave her from the primeval strata of

her wardrobe; it was a sin and a shame to buy anything to dress that

child, if it wasn't a pair of shoes. In this particular, however, Mrs.

Glegg did her sister Bessy some injustice, for Mrs. Tulliver had

really made great efforts to induce Maggie to wear a leghorn bonnet

and a dyed silk frock made out of her aunt Glegg's, but the results

had been such that Mrs. Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her

maternal bosom; for Maggie, declaring that the frock smelt of nasty

dye, had taken an opportunity of basting it together with the roast

beef the first Sunday she wore it, and finding this scheme answer, she

had subsequently pumped on the bonnet with its green ribbons, so as to

give it a general resemblance to a sage cheese garnished with withered

lettuces. I must urge in excuse for Maggie, that Tom had laughed at

her in the bonnet, and said she looked like an old Judy. Aunt Pullet,

too, made presents of clothes, but these were always pretty enough to

please Maggie as well as her mother. Of all her sisters, Mrs. Tulliver

certainly preferred her sister Pullet, not without a return of

preference; but Mrs. Pullet was sorry Bessy had those naughty, awkward

children; she would do the best she could by them, but it was a pity

they weren't as good and as pretty as sister Deane's child. Maggie and

Tom, on their part, thought their aunt Pullet tolerable, chiefly

because she was not their aunt Glegg. Tom always declined to go more

than once during his holidays to see either of them. Both his uncles

tipped him that once, of course; but at his aunt Pullet's there were a

great many toads to pelt in the cellar-area, so that he preferred the

visit to her. Maggie shuddered at the toads, and dreamed of them

horribly, but she liked her uncle Pullet's musical snuff-box. Still,

it was agreed by the sisters, in Mrs. Tulliver's absence, that the

Tulliver blood did not mix well with the Dodson blood; that, in fact,

poor Bessy's children were Tullivers, and that Tom, notwithstanding he

had the Dodson complexion, was likely to be as "contrairy" as his

father. As for Maggie, she was the picture of her aunt Moss, Mr.

Tulliver's sister,--a large-boned woman, who had married as poorly as

could be; had no china, and had a husband who had much ado to pay his

rent. But when Mrs. Pullet was alone with Mrs. Tulliver upstairs, the

remarks were naturally to the disadvantage of Mrs. Glegg, and they

agreed, in confidence, that there was no knowing what sort of fright

sister Jane would come out next. But their _t***- -t***_ was curtailed

by the appearance of Mrs. Deane with little Lucy; and Mrs. Tulliver

had to look on with a silent pang while Lucy's blond curls were

adjusted. It was quite unaccountable that Mrs. Deane, the thinnest and

sallowest of all the Miss Dodsons, should have had this child, who

might have been taken for Mrs. Tulliver's any day. And Maggie always

looked twice as dark as usual when she was by the side of Lucy.

She did to-day, when she and Tom came in from the garden with their

father and their uncle Glegg. Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very

carelessly, and coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl,

rushed at once to Lucy, who was standing by her mother's knee.

Certainly the contrast between the cousins was conspicuous, and to

superficial eyes was very much to the disadvantage of Maggie though a

connoisseur might have seen "points" in her which had a higher promise

for maturity than Lucy's natty completeness. It was like the contrast

between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up

the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her

was neat,--her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her

little straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows,

rather darker than her curls, to match hazel eyes, which looked up

with shy pleasure at Maggie, taller by the head, though scarcely a

year older. Maggie always looked at Lucy with delight.

She was fond of fancying a world where the people never got any larger

than children of their own age, and she made the queen of it just like

Lucy, with a little crown on her head, and a little sceptre in her

hand--only the queen was Maggie herself in Lucy's form.

"Oh, Lucy," she burst out, after kissing her, "you'll stay with Tom

and me, won't you? Oh, kiss her, Tom."

Tom, too, had come up to Lucy, but he was not going to kiss her--no;

he came up to her with Maggie, because it seemed easier, on the whole,

than saying, "How do you do?" to all those aunts and uncles. He stood

looking at nothing in particular, with the blushing, awkward air and

semi-smile which are common to shy boys when in company,--very much as

if they had come into the world by mistake, and found it in a degree

of undress that was quite embarrassing.

"Heyday!" said aunt Glegg, with loud emphasis. "Do little boys and

gells come into a room without taking notice of their uncles and

aunts? That wasn't the way when _I_ was a little gell."

"Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears," said Mrs. Tulliver,

looking anxious and melancholy. She wanted to whisper to Maggie a

command to go and have her hair brushed.

"Well, and how do you do? And I hope you're good children, are you?"

said Aunt Glegg, in the same loud, emphatic way, as she took their

hands, hurting them with her large rings, and kissing their cheeks

much against their desire. "Look up, Tom, look up. Boys as go to

boarding-schools should hold their heads up. Look at me now." Tom

declined that pleasure apparently, for he tried to draw his hand away.

"Put your hair behind your ears, Maggie, and keep your frock on your

shoulder."

Aunt Glegg always spoke to them in this loud, emphatic way, as if she

considered them deaf, or perhaps rather idiotic; it was a means, she

thought, of making them feel that they were accountable creatures, and

might be a salutary check on naughty tendencies. Bessy's children were

so spoiled--they'd need have somebody to make them feel their duty.

"Well, my dears," said aunt Pullet, in a compassionate voice, "you

grow wonderful fast. I doubt they'll outgrow their strength," she

added, looking over their heads, with a melancholy expression, at

their mother. "I think the gell has too much hair. I'd have it thinned

and cut shorter, sister, if I was you; it isn't good for her health.

It's that as makes her skin so brown, I shouldn't wonder. Don't you

think so, sister Deane?"

"I can't say, I'm sure, sister," said Mrs. Deane, shutting her lips

close again, and looking at Maggie with a critical eye.

"No, no," said Mr. Tulliver, "the child's healthy enough; there's

nothing ails her. There's red wheat as well as white, for that matter,

and some like the dark grain best. But it 'ud be as well if Bessy 'ud

have the child's hair cut, so as it 'ud lie smooth."

A dreadful resolve was gathering in Maggie's breast, but it was

arrested by the desire to know from her aunt Deane whether she would

leave Lucy behind. Aunt Deane would hardly ever let Lucy come to see

them. After various reasons for refusal, Mrs. Deane appealed to Lucy

herself.

"You wouldn't like to stay behind without mother, should you, Lucy?"

"Yes, please, mother," said Lucy, timidly, blushing very pink all over

her little neck.

"Well done, Lucy! Let her stay, Mrs. Deane, let her stay," said Mr.

Deane, a large but alert-looking man, with a type of _physique_ to be

seen in all ranks of English society,--bald crown, red whiskers, full

forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see noblemen

like Mr. Deane, and you may see grocers or day-laborers like him; but

the keenness of his brown eyes was less common than his contour.

He held a silver snuff-box very tightly in his hand, and now and then

exchanged a pinch with Mr. Tulliver, whose box was only

silver-mounted, so that it was naturally a joke between them that Mr.

Tulliver wanted to exchange snuff-boxes also. Mr. Deane's box had been

given him by the superior partners in the firm to which he belonged,

at the same time that they gave him a share in the business, in

acknowledgment of his valuable services as manager. No man was thought

more highly of in St. Ogg's than Mr. Deane; and some persons were even

of opinion that Miss Susan Dodson, who was once held to have made the

worst match of all the Dodson sisters, might one day ride in a better

carriage, and live in a better house, even than her sister Pullet.

There was no knowing where a man would stop, who had got his foot into

a great mill-owning, shipowning business like that of Guest & Co.,

with a banking concern attached. And Mrs. Deane, as her intimate

female friends observed, was proud and "having" enough; _she_ wouldn't

let her husband stand still in the world for want of spurring.

"Maggie," said Mrs. Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her, and whispering

in her ear, as soon as this point of Lucy's staying was settled, "go

and get your hair brushed, do, for shame. I told you not to come in

without going to Martha first, you know I did."

"Tom come out with me," whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she

passed him; and Tom followed willingly enough.

"Come upstairs with me, Tom," she whispered, when they were outside

the door. "There's something I want to do before dinner."

"There's no time to play at anything before dinner," said Tom, whose

imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.

"Oh yes, there is time for this; _do_ come, Tom."

Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother's room, and saw her go at

once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.

"What are they for, Maggie?" said Tom, feeling his curiosity awakened.

Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight

across the middle of her forehead.

"Oh, my buttons! Maggie, you'll catch it!" exclaimed Tom; "you'd

better not cut any more off."

Snip! went the great scissors again while Tom was speaking, and he

couldn't help feeling it was rather good fun; Maggie would look so

queer.

"Here, Tom, cut it behind for me," said Maggie, excited by her own

daring, and anxious to finish the deed.

"You'll catch it, you know," said Tom, nodding his head in an

admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors.

"Never mind, make haste!" said Maggie, giving a little stamp with her

foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed.

The black locks were so thick, nothing could be more tempting to a lad

who had already tasted the forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony's

mane. I speak to those who know the satisfaction of making a pair of

scissors meet through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious

grinding snip, and then another and another, and the hinder-locks fell

heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven

manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had

emerged from a wood into the open plain.

"Oh, Maggie," said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as

he laughed, "Oh, my buttons! what a queer thing you look! Look at

yourself in the glass; you look like the i***t we throw out nutshells

to at school."

Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly at

her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about

it, and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother

and her aunts by this very decided course of action; she didn't want

her hair to look pretty,--that was out of the question,--she only

wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault

with her. But now, when Tom began to laugh at her, and say she was

like an i***t, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the

glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, and Maggie's

cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a little.

"Oh, Maggie, you'll have to go down to dinner directly," said Tom.

"Oh, my!"

"Don't laugh at me, Tom," said Maggie, in a passionate tone, with an

outburst of angry tears, stamping, and giving him a push.

"Now, then, spitfire!" said Tom. "What did you cut it off for, then? I

shall go down: I can smell the dinner going in."

He hurried downstairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of the

irrevocable which was almost an every-day experience of her small

soul. She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done, that it

was very foolish, and that she should have to hear and think more

about her hair than ever; for Maggie rushed to her deeds with

passionate impulse, and then saw not only their consequences, but what

would have happened if they had not been done, with all the detail and

exaggerated circumstance of an active imagination. Tom never did the

same sort of foolish things as Maggie, having a wonderful instinctive

discernment of what would turn to his advantage or disadvantage; and

so it happened, that though he was much more wilful and inflexible

than Maggie, his mother hardly ever called him naughty. But if Tom did

make a mistake of that sort, he espoused it, and stood by it: he

"didn't mind." If he broke the lash of his father's gigwhip by lashing

the gate, he couldn't help it,--the whip shouldn't have got caught in

the hinge. If Tom Tulliver whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that

the whipping of gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that he,

Tom Tulliver, was justifiable in whipping that particular gate, and he

wasn't going to be sorry. But Maggie, as she stood crying before the

glass, felt it impossible that she should go down to dinner and endure

the severe eyes and severe words of her aunts, while Tom and Lucy, and

Martha, who waited at table, and perhaps her father and her uncles,

would laugh at her; for if Tom had laughed at her, of course every one

else would; and if she had only let her hair alone, she could have sat

with Tom and Lucy, and had the apricot pudding and the custard! What

could she do but sob? She sat as helpless and despairing among her

black locks as Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very trivial,

perhaps, this anguish seems to weather-worn mortals who have to think

of Christmas bills, dead loves, and broken friendships; but it was not

less bitter to Maggie--perhaps it was even more bitter--than what we

are fond of calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life.

"Ah, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about by and by,"

is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in

our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been

grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny

bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or

nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the poignancy

of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered

sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments

has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have blent

themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and

manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our

children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is

there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not

merely with a memory _of_ what he did and what happened to him, of

what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with

an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then,

when it was so long from one Midsummer to another; what he felt when

his school fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch

the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the

holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and fell from

idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance

into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have

a tailed coat that "half," although every other boy of his age had

gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early

bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless

conception of life, that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should

not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.

"Miss Maggie, you're to come down this minute," said Kezia, entering

the room hurriedly. "Lawks! what have you been a-doing? I never _see_

such a fright!"

"Don't, Kezia," said Maggie, angrily. "Go away!"

"But I tell you you're to come down, Miss, this minute; your mother

says so," said Kezia, going up to Maggie and taking her by the hand to

raise her from the floor.

"Get away, Kezia; I don't want any dinner," said Maggie, resisting

Kezia's arm. "I sha'n't come."

"Oh, well, I can't stay. I've got to wait at dinner," said Kezia,

going out again.

"Maggie, you little silly," said Tom, peeping into the room ten

minutes after, "why don't you come and have your dinner? There's lots

o' goodies, and mother says you're to come. What are you crying for,

you little spooney?"

Oh, it was dreadful! Tom was so hard and unconcerned; if _he_ had been

crying on the floor, Maggie would have cried too. And there was the

dinner, so nice; and she was _so_ hungry. It was very bitter.

But Tom was not altogether hard. He was not inclined to cry, and did

not feel that Maggie's grief spoiled his prospect of the sweets; but

he went and put his head near her, and said in a lower, comforting

tone,--

"Won't you come, then, Magsie? Shall I bring you a bit o' pudding when

I've had mine, and a custard and things?"

"Ye-e-es," said Maggie, beginning to feel life a little more

tolerable.

"Very well," said Tom, going away. But he turned again at the door and

said, "But you'd better come, you know. There's the dessert,--nuts,

you know, and cowslip wine."

Maggie's tears had ceased, and she looked reflective as Tom left her.

His good nature had taken off the keenest edge of her suffering, and

nuts with cowslip wine began to assert their legitimate influence.

Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks, and slowly she made

her way downstairs. Then she stood leaning with one shoulder against

the frame of the dining-parlour door, peeping in when it was ajar. She

saw Tom and Lucy with an empty chair between them, and there were the

custards on a side-table; it was too much. She slipped in and went

toward the empty chair. But she had no sooner sat down than she

repented and wished herself back again.

Mrs. Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her, and felt such a

"turn" that she dropped the large gravy-spoon into the dish, with the

most serious results to the table-cloth. For Kezia had not betrayed

the reason of Maggie's refusal to come down, not liking to give her

mistress a shock in the moment of carving, and Mrs. Tulliver thought

there was nothing worse in question than a fit of perverseness, which

was inflicting its own punishment by depriving Maggie of half her

dinner.

Mrs. Tulliver's scream made all eyes turn towards the same point as

her own, and Maggie's cheeks and ears began to burn, while uncle

Glegg, a kind-looking, white-haired old gentleman, said,--

"Heyday! what little gell's this? Why, I don't know her. Is it some

little gell you've picked up in the road, Kezia?"

"Why, she's gone and cut her hair herself," said Mr. Tulliver in an

undertone to Mr. Deane, laughing with much enjoyment. Did you ever

know such a little hussy as it is?"

"Why, little miss, you've made yourself look very funny," said Uncle

Pullet, and perhaps he never in his life made an observation which was

felt to be so lacerating.

"Fie, for shame!" said aunt Glegg, in her loudest, severest tone of

reproof. "Little gells as cut their own hair should be whipped and fed

on bread and water,--not come and sit down with their aunts and

uncles."

"Ay, ay," said uncle Glegg, meaning to give a playful turn to this

denunciation, "she must be sent to jail, I think, and they'll cut the

rest of her hair off there, and make it all even."

"She's more like a gypsy nor ever," said aunt Pullet, in a pitying

tone; "it's very bad luck, sister, as the gell should be so brown; the

boy's fair enough. I doubt it'll stand in her way i' life to be so

brown."

"She's a naughty child, as'll break her mother's heart," said Mrs.

Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.

Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of reproach and derision.

Her first flush came from anger, which gave her a transient power of

defiance, and Tom thought she was braving it out, supported by the

recent appearance of the pudding and custard. Under this impression,

he whispered, "Oh, my! Maggie, I told you you'd catch it." He meant to

be friendly, but Maggie felt convinced that Tom was rejoicing in her

ignominy. Her feeble power of defiance left her in an instant, her

heart swelled, and getting up from her chair, she ran to her father,

hid her face on his shoulder, and burst out into loud sobbing.

"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 insensibility begins. She took no notice of her

sister's remark, but threw back her capstrings and dispensed the

pudding, in mute resignation.

With the dessert there came entire deliverance for Maggie, for the

children were told they might have their nuts and wine in the

summer-house, since the day was so mild; and they scampered out among

the budding bushes of the garden with the alacrity of small animals

getting from under a burning glass.

Mrs. Tulliver had her special reason for this permission: now the

dinner was despatched, and every one's mind disengaged, it was the

right moment to communicate Mr. Tulliver's intention concerning Tom,

and it would be as well for Tom himself to be absent. The children

were used to hear themselves talked of as freely as if they were

birds, and could understand nothing, however they might stretch their

necks and listen; but on this occasion Mrs. Tulliver manifested an

unusual discretion, because she had recently had evidence that the

going to school to a clergyman was a sore point with Tom, who looked

at it as very much on a par with going to school to a constable. Mrs.

Tulliver had a sighing sense that her husband would do as he liked,

whatever sister Glegg said, or sister Pullet either; but at least they

would not be able to say, if the thing turned out ill, that Bessy had

fallen in with her husband's folly without letting her own friends

know a word about it.

"Mr. Tulliver," she said, interrupting her husband in his talk with

Mr. Deane, "it's time now to tell the children's aunts and uncles what

you're thinking of doing with Tom, isn't it?"

"Very well," said Mr. Tulliver, rather sharply, "I've no objections to

tell anybody what I mean to do with him. I've settled," he added,

looking toward Mr. Glegg and Mr. Deane,--"I've settled to send him to

a Mr. Stelling, a parson, down at King's Lorton, there,--an uncommon

clever fellow, I understand, as'll put him up to most things."

There was a rustling demonstration of surprise in the company, such as

you may have observed in a country congregation when they hear an

allusion to their week-day affairs from the pulpit. It was equally

astonishing to the aunts and uncles to find a parson introduced into

Mr. Tulliver's family arrangements. As for uncle Pullet, he could

hardly have been more thoroughly obfuscated if Mr. Tulliver had said

that he was going to send Tom to the Lord Chancellor; for uncle Pullet

belonged to that extinct class of British yeoman who, dressed in good

broadcloth, paid high rates and taxes, went to church, and ate a

particularly good dinner on Sunday, without dreaming that the British

constitution in Church and State had a traceable origin any more than

the solar system and the fixed stars.

It is melancholy, but true, that Mr. Pullet had the most confused idea

of a bishop as a sort of a baronet, who might or might not be a

clergyman; and as the rector of his own parish was a man of high

family and fortune, the idea that a clergyman could be a schoolmaster

was too remote from Mr. Pullet's experience to be readily conceivable.

I know it is difficult for people in these instructed times to believe

in uncle Pullet's ignorance; but let them reflect on the remarkable

results of a great natural faculty under favoring circumstances. And

uncle Pullet had a great natural faculty for ignorance. He was the

first to give utterance to his astonishment.

"Why, what can you be going to send him to a parson for?" he said,

with an amazed twinkling in his eyes, looking at Mr. Glegg and Mr.

Deane, to see if they showed any signs of comprehension.

"Why, because the parsons are the best schoolmasters, by what I can

make out," said poor Mr. Tulliver, who, in the maze of this puzzling

world, laid hold of any clue with great readiness and tenacity.

"Jacobs at th' academy's no parson, and he's done very bad by the boy;

and I made up my mind, if I send him to school again, it should be to

somebody different to Jacobs. And this Mr. Stelling, by what I can

make out, is the sort o' man I want. And I mean my boy to go to him at

Midsummer," he concluded, in a tone of decision, tapping his snuff-box

and taking a pinch.

"You'll have to pay a swinging half-yearly bill, then, eh, Tulliver?

The clergymen have highish notions, in general," said Mr. Deane,

taking snuff vigorously, as he always did when wishing to maintain a

neutral position.

"What! do you think the parson'll teach him to know a good sample o'

wheat when he sees it, neighbor Tulliver?" said Mr. Glegg, who was

fond of his jest, and having retired from business, felt that it was

not only allowable but becoming in him to take a playful view of

things.

"Why, you see, I've got a plan i' my head about Tom," said Mr.

Tulliver, pausing after that statement and lifting up his glass.

"Well, if I may be allowed to speak, and it's seldom as I am," said

Mrs. Glegg, with a tone of bitter meaning, "I should like to know what

good is to come to the boy by bringin' him up above his fortin."

"Why," said Mr. Tulliver, not looking at Mrs. Glegg, but at the male

part of his audience, "you see, I've made up my mind not to bring Tom

up to my own business. I've had my thoughts about it all along, and I

made up my mind by what I saw with Garnett and _his_ son. I mean to

put him to some business as he can go into without capital, and I want

to give him an eddication as he'll be even wi' the lawyers and folks,

and put me up to a notion now an' then."

Mrs. Glegg emitted a long sort of guttural sound with closed lips,

that smiled in mingled pity and scorn.

"It 'ud be a fine deal better for some people," she said, after that

introductory note, "if they'd let the lawyers alone."

"Is he at the head of a grammar school, then, this clergyman, such as

that at Market Bewley?" said Mr. Deane.

"No, nothing of that," said Mr. Tulliver. "He won't take more than two

or three pupils, and so he'll have the more time to attend to 'em, you

know."

"Ah, and get his eddication done the sooner; they can't learn much at

a time when there's so many of 'em," said uncle Pullet, feeling that

he was getting quite an insight into this difficult matter.

"But he'll want the more pay, I doubt," said Mr. Glegg.

"Ay, ay, a cool hundred a year, that's all," said Mr. Tulliver, with

some pride at his own spirited course. "But then, you know, it's an

investment; Tom's eddication 'ull be so much capital to him."

"Ay, there's something in that," said Mr. Glegg. "Well well, neighbor

Tulliver, you may be right, you may be right:

'When land is gone and money's spent,

Then learning is most excellent.'

"I remember seeing those two lines wrote on a window at Buxton. But us

that have got no learning had better keep our money, eh, neighbor

Pullet?" Mr. Glegg rubbed his knees, and looked very pleasant.

"Mr. Glegg, I wonder _at_ you," said his wife. "It's very unbecoming

in a man o' your age and belongings."

"What's unbecoming, Mrs. G.?" said Mr. Glegg, winking pleasantly at

the company. "My new blue coat as I've got on?"

"I pity your weakness, Mr. Glegg. I say it's unbecoming to be making a

joke when you see your own kin going headlongs to ruin."

"If you mean me by that," said Mr. Tulliver, considerably nettled,

"you needn't trouble yourself to fret about me. I can manage my own

affairs without troubling other folks."

"Bless me!" said Mr. Deane, judiciously introducing a new idea, "why,

now I come to think of it, somebody said Wakem was going to send _his_

son--the deformed lad--to a clergyman, didn't they, Susan?" (appealing

to his wife).

"I can give no account of it, I'm sure," said Mrs. Deane, closing her

lips very tightly again. Mrs. Deane was not a woman to take part in a

scene where missiles were flying.

"Well," said Mr. Tulliver, speaking all the more cheerfully, that Mrs.

Glegg might see he didn't mind her, "if Wakem thinks o' sending his

son to a clergyman, depend on it I shall make no mistake i' sending

Tom to one. Wakem's as big a scoundrel as Old Harry ever made, but he

knows the length of every man's foot he's got to deal with. Ay, ay,

tell me who's Wakem's butcher, and I'll tell you where to get your

meat."

"But lawyer Wakem's son's got a hump-back," said Mrs. Pullet, who felt

as if the whole business had a funereal aspect; "it's more nat'ral to

send _him_ to a clergyman."

"Yes," said Mr. Glegg, interpreting Mrs. Pullet's observation with

erroneous plausibility, "you must consider that, neighbor Tulliver;

Wakem's son isn't likely to follow any business. Wakem 'ull make a

gentleman of him, poor fellow."

"Mr. Glegg," said Mrs. G., in a tone which implied that her

indignation would fizz and ooze a little, though she was determined to

keep it corked up, "you'd far better hold your tongue. Mr. Tulliver

doesn't want to know your opinion nor mine either. There's folks in

the world as know better than everybody else."

"Why, I should think that's you, if we're to trust your own tale,"

said Mr. Tulliver, beginning to boil up again.

"Oh, _I_ say nothing," said Mrs. Glegg, sarcastically. "My advice has

never been asked, and I don't give it."

"It'll be the first time, then," said Mr. Tulliver. "It's the only

thing you're over-ready at giving."

"I've been over-ready at lending, then, if I haven't been over-ready

at giving," said Mrs. Glegg. "There's folks I've lent money to, as

perhaps I shall repent o' lending money to kin."

"Come, come, come," said Mr. Glegg, soothingly. But Mr. Tulliver was

not to be hindered of his retort.

"You've got a bond for it, I reckon," he said; "and you've had your

five per cent, kin or no kin."

"Sister," said Mrs. Tulliver, pleadingly, "drink your wine, and let me

give you some almonds and raisins."

"Bessy, I'm sorry for you," said Mrs. Glegg, very much with the

feeling of a cur that seizes the opportunity of diverting his bark

toward the man who carries no stick. "It's poor work talking o'

almonds and raisins."

"Lors, sister Glegg, don't be so quarrelsome," said Mrs. Pullet,

beginning to cry a little. "You may be struck with a fit, getting so

red in the face after dinner, and we are but just out o' mourning, all

of us,--and all wi' gowns craped alike and just put by; it's very bad

among sisters."

"I should think it _is_ bad," said Mrs. Glegg. "Things are come to a

fine pass when one sister invites the other to her house o' purpose to

quarrel with her and abuse her."

"Softly, softly, Jane; be reasonable, be reasonable," said Mr. Glegg.

But while he was speaking, Mr. Tulliver, who had by no means said

enough to satisfy his anger, burst out again.

"Who wants to quarrel with you?" he said. "It's you as can't let

people alone, but must be gnawing at 'em forever. _I_ should never

want to quarrel with any woman if she kept her place."

"My place, indeed!" said Mrs. Glegg, getting rather more shrill.

"There's your betters, Mr. Tulliver, as are dead and in their grave,

treated me with a different sort o' respect to what you do; _though_

I've got a husband as'll sit by and see me abused by them as 'ud never

ha' had the chance if there hadn't been them in our family as married

worse than they might ha' done."

"If you talk o' that," said Mr. Tulliver, "my family's as good as

yours, and better, for it hasn't got a damned ill-tempered woman in

it!"

"Well," said Mrs. Glegg, rising from her chair, "I don't know whether

you think it's a fine thing to sit by and hear me swore at, Mr. Glegg;

but I'm not going to stay a minute longer in this house. You can stay

behind, and come home with the gig, and I'll walk home."

"Dear heart, dear heart!" said Mr. Glegg in a melancholy tone, as he

followed his wife out of the room.

"Mr. Tulliver, how could you talk so?" said Mrs. Tulliver, with the

tears in her eyes.

"Let her go," said Mr. Tulliver, too hot to be damped by any amount of

tears. "Let her go, and the sooner the better; she won't be trying to

domineer over _me_ again in a hurry."

"Sister Pullet," said Mrs. Tulliver, helplessly, "do you think it 'ud

be any use for you to go after her and try to pacify her?"

"Better not, better not," said Mr. Deane. "You'll make it up another

day."

"Then, sisters, shall we go and look at the children?" said Mrs.

Tulliver, drying her eyes.

No proposition could have been more seasonable. Mr. Tulliver felt very

much as if the air had been cleared of obtrusive flies now the women

were out of the room. There were few things he liked better than a

chat with Mr. Deane, whose close application to business allowed the

pleasure very rarely. Mr. Deane, he considered, was the "knowingest"

man of his acquaintance, and he had besides a ready causticity of

tongue that made an agreeable supplement to Mr. Tulliver's own

tendency that way, which had remained in rather an inarticulate

condition. And now the women were gone, they could carry on their

serious talk without frivolous interruption. They could exchange their

views concerning the Duke of Wellington, whose conduct in the Catholic

Question had thrown such an entirely new light on his character; and

speak slightingly of his conduct at the battle of Waterloo, which he

would never have won if there hadn't been a great many Englishmen at

his back, not to speak of Blucher and the Prussians, who, as Mr.

Tulliver had heard from a person of particular knowledge in that

matter, had come up in the very nick of time; though here there was a

slight dissidence, Mr. Deane remarking that he was not disposed to

give much credit to the Prussians,--the build of their vessels,

together with the unsatisfactory character of transactions in Dantzic

beer, inclining him to form rather a low view of Prussian pluck

generally. Rather beaten on this ground, Mr. Tulliver proceeded to

express his fears that the country could never again be what it used

to be; but Mr. Deane, attached to a firm of which the returns were on

the increase, naturally took a more lively view of the present, and

had some details to give concerning the state of the imports,

especially in hides and spelter, which soothed Mr. Tulliver's

imagination by throwing into more distant perspective the period when

the country would become utterly the prey of Papists and Radicals, and

there would be no more chance for honest men.

Uncle Pullet sat by and listened with twinkling eyes to these high

matters. He didn't understand politics himself,--thought they were a

natural gift,--but by what he could make out, this Duke of Wellington

was no better than he should be.