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University of California • Berkeley

From the Collection of

Edward Hellman Heller

and

Elinor Raas Heller

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS

THE

MILL ON THE FLOSS

BY

GEORGE ELIOT

AUTHOR OF SCENES OP CLSBIOAL LIFR" AND "ADAM BEDS'

In their death they were not divided.'

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLX

TTie Right of Translation is reserved.

Digitized by tine Internet Archive

in 2008 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/flossmillon01eliorich.

CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

BOOK FIRST.

BOY AND GIRL.

CHAP. PACK

I. OUTSIDE DORLCOTE MILL 1

ir. MR TULLIVER, OF DORLCOTE MILL, DECLARES HIS

RESOLUTION ABOUT TOM «

HL MR RILEY GIVES HIS ADVICE CONCERNING A SCHOOL

FOR TOM 17

IV. TOM IS EXPECTED 42

V. TOM COMES HOME 52

VL THE AUNTS AND UNCLES ARE COMING 71

Vn. ENTER THE AUNTS AND UNCLES 93

Vin. MR TULLIVER SHOWS HIS WEAKER SIDE 136

IX. TO OARUM FIRS 155

X. MAGGIE BEHAVES WORSE THAN SHE EXPECTED 181

XI. MAGGIE TRIES TO RUN AWAY FROM HER SHADOW 193

Xn. MR AND MRS GLEGG AT HOME 215

ion. MR TULLIVER FURTHER ENTANGLES TfiE SKEIN OF LIFE 239

VI CONTENTS.

BOOK SECOND. SCHOOL-TIME.

CHAP. PAGE

T. TOM'S "FIRST half" 247

II. THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS 285

III. THE NEW SCHOOLFELLOW 299

IV. ''THE YOUNG IDEA" 311

V. MAGGIE'S SECOND VISIT 331

VL A LOVE SCENE 340

VIL THE GOLDEN GATES ARE PASSED 349

BOOK FIRST

BOY AND GIRL

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

CHAPTER L

OUTSIDE DORLCOTE MILL.

A WIDE plain, where the broadening Floss hur- ries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships — laden with the fresh- scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal — are borne along to the town of St Ogg's, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river brink, tinging the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures. VOL. I. A-

2 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown com. There is a remnant still of the last year's golden clusters of beehive ricks rising at intervals beyond the hedgerows ; and everywhere the hedge- rows are studded with trees : the distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their red- brown saUs close among the branches of the spread- ing ash. Just by the red-roofed town the tributary Eipple flows with a lively current into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its dark, chang- ing wavelets ! It seems to me like a living com- panion while I wander along the bank and listen to its low placid voice, as to the voice of one who is deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping willows. I remember the stone bridge.

And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of de- parting February it is pleasant to look at — ^perhaps the chill damp season adds a charm to the trimly- kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 3

little withy plantation, and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in front of the house. As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moist- ness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world above.

The rush of the water, and the booming of the mill, bring a dreamy deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene. They are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered waggon coming home with sacks of grain. That honest waggoner is thinking of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour ; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses, — the strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner, as if they needed that hint ! See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope towards the bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near home.

4 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Look at their grand shaggy feet that seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling haunches ! I should like well to hear them neigh over their hardly-earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the muddy pond. Now they are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace, and the arch of the covered waggon disappears at the turning behind the trees.

Now I can turn my eyes towards the mill again, and watch the unresting wheel sending out its dia- mond jets of water. That little girl is watching it too : she has been standing on just the same spot at the edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge. And that queer white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel ; perhaps he is jealous, because his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement. It is time the little play- fellow went in, I think ; and there is a very bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines out imd^ the deepening grey of the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of this bridge. ....

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 5

Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years ago. Before I dozed ofif, I was going to tell you what Mr and ^Irs Tulliver were talking about, as they sat by the bright fire in the left-hand parlour on that very afternoon I have been dream- ing of.

CHAPTEE 11.

ME TULLIVEE, OF DORLCOTE MILL, DECLAEES HIS EESOLUTION ABOUT TOM.

" What I want, you know," said Mr Tulliver — " what I want is to give Tom a good eddication ; an eddica- tion as'll be a bread to him. That was what I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave 'th' academy at Ladyday. I mean to put him to a downright good school at Midsummer. The two years at th' academy 'ud ha' done well enough, if I'd meant to make a miUer and farmer of him ; for he's had a fine sight more schoolin' nor / ever got : all the learnin' my father ever paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and the alphabet at th' other. But I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the tricks o' these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourisL It 'ud be a help to me wi' these law-suits, and arbitrations, and things. I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad — I

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 7

should be sorry for him to be a raskill — but a sort o' engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and val- lyer, like Kiley, or one o' them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch- chain and a high stool. They're pretty nigh all one, and they're not far off being even wi' the law, / be- lieve ; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i' the face as hard as one cat looks another. He's none frightened at hina."

Mr Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blond comely woman, in a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it is since fan-shaped caps were worn — they must be so near coming in agaiiL At that time, when Mrs Tulliver was nearly forty, they were new at St Ogg's, and considered sweet things).

" Well, Mr Tulliver, you know best: Tve no objec- tions. But hadn't I better kill a couple o' fowl and have th' aunts and uncles to dinner next week, so as you may hear what Sister Glegg and Sister Pullet have got to say about it ? There's a couple o' fowl wants killing ! "

" You may kill every fowl i' the yard, if you like, Bessy ; but I shall ask neither aunt nor uncle what I'm to do wi' my own lad," said Mr Tulliver, de- fiantly.

" Dear heart/' said Mrs Tulliver, shocked at this

8 THE MILL ON THE FLQSS.

sanguinary rhetoric, " how can you talk so, Mr TuJ- liver ? But it's your way to speak disrespectful o' my family ; and Sister Glegg throws all the blame upo' me, though I m sure I'm as innocent as the babe unborn. Tor nobody's ever heard me say as it wasn't lucky for my children to have aunts and uncles as can live independent. Howiver, if Tom's to go to a new school, I should like hun to go where I can wash him and mend him ; else he might as well have calico as linen, for they'd be one as yallow as th' other before they'd been washed half-a-dozen times. And then, when the box is goin' backards and forrards, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork- pie, or an apple ; for he can do with an extry bit, bless him, whether they stint him at the meals or no. My children can eat as much victuals as most, thank God."

" Well, well, we won't send him out o' reach o' the carrier's cart, if other things fit in," said Mr Tul- liver. " But you mustn't put a spoke i' the wheel about the washin', if we can't get a school near enough. That's the fault I have to find wi' you, Bessy : if you see a stick i' the road, you're allays thinkin' you can't step over it. You'd want me not to hire a good waggoner, 'cause he'd got a mole on his face."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 9

"Dear heart!" said Mrs Tulliver, in mild sur- prise, " when did I iver make objections to a man because he'd got a mole on his face ? I'm sure I'm rether fond o' the moles, for my brother, as is dead an' gone, had a mole on his brow. But I can't remember your iver offering to hire a waggoner with a mole, Mr Tulliver. There was John Gibbs hadn't a mole on his face no more nol: you have, an' I was all for having you hire him ; an' so you did hire him, an' if he hadn't died o' th' inflammation, as we paid Dr Tumbull for attending him, he'd very like ha' been driving the waggon now. He might have a mole somewhere out o' sight, but how was I to know that, Mr TuUiver?"

" No, no, Bessy ; I didn't mean justly the mole ; I meant it to stand for summat else ; but niver mind — it's puzzling work, talking is. What I'm thinking on, is how to find the right sort o' school to send Tom to, for I might be ta'en in again, as I've been wi' th' academy. I'll have nothing to do wi' a 'cademy again : whativer school I send Tom to, it shan't be a 'cademy ; it shall be a place where the lads spend their time i' summat else besides blacking the family's shoes, and getting up the potatoes. It's an uncommon puzzling thing to know what school to pick."

10 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Mr Tulliver paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands into his breeches pockets as if he hoped to find some suggestion there. Apparently he was not disappointed, for he presently said, *•' I know what I'll do — 111 talk it over wi' Riley : he's coming to-morrow, t' arbitrate about the dam."

'^ Well, Mr Tulliver, I've put the sheets out for the best bed, and Kezia's got 'em hanging at the fire. They aren't the best sheets, but they're good enough for anybody to sleep in, be he who he wiU ; for as for them best Holland sheets, I should repent buying 'em, only they'll do to lay us out in. An' if you was to die to-morrow, Mr Tulliver, they're mangled beautiful, an' all ready, an' smell o' laven- der as it 'ud be a pleasure to lay 'em out ; an' they lie at the left-hand corner o' the big oak linen-chest, at the back : not as I should trust anybody to look 'em out but myself."

As Mrs Tulliver uttered the last sentence, she drew a bright bunch of keys from her pocket, and singled out one, rubbing her thumb and finger up and down it with a placid smile while she looked at the clear fire. If Mr Tulliver had been a sus- ceptible man in his conjugal relation, he might have supposed that she drew out the key to aid her imagination in anticipating the moment when

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 11

he would be in a state to justify the production of the best Holland sheets. Happily he was not so ; he was only susceptible in respect of his right to water-power; moreover, he had the marital habit of not listening very closely, and, since his mention of Mr Eiley, had been apparently occupied in a tac- tile examination of his woollen stockings.

" I think IVe hit it, Bessy," was his first remark after a short silence. " Kiley's as likely a man as any to know o' some school ; he's had schooling himself, an' goes about to all sorts o' places — arbi- tratin' and vallyin' and that. And we shall have time to talk it over to-morrow night when the business is done. I want Tom to be such a sort o' man as Riley, you know — as can talk pretty nigh as well as if it was all wrote out for him, and knows a good lot o' words as don't mean much, so as you can't lay hold of 'em i' law; and a good solid knowledge o' business too."

" Well," said Mrs Tulliver, " so far as talking proper, and knowing everything, and walking with a bend in his back, and setting his hair up, I shouldn't mind the lad being brought up to that But them fine-talking men from the big to^vns mostly wear the false shirt-fronts ; they wear a frill till it's all a mess, and then hide it with a

12 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

bib ; I know Kiley does. And then, if Tom's to go and live at Mudport, like Eiley, hell have a house with a kitchen hardly big enough to turn in, an' niver get a fresh egg for his breakfast, an' sleep up three pair o' stairs — or four, for what I know — an' be burnt to death before he can get down/'

"No, no," said Mr TuUiver, " I've no thoughts of his going to Mudport : I mean him to set up his office at St Ogg's, close by us, an' live at home. But," continued Mr Tulliver after a pause, " what I'm a bit afraid on is, as Tom hasn't got the right sort o' brains for a smart fellow. I doubt he's a bit slowish. He takes after your family, Bessy."

" Yes, that he does," said Mrs Tulliver, accepting the last proposition entirely on its own merits; " he's wonderful for liking a deal o' salt in his broth. That was my brother's way, and my father's before him."

**' It seems a bit of a pity, though," said Mr Tulli- ver, " as the lad should take after the mother's side istead o' the little wench. That's the worst on't wi' the crossing o' breeds : you can never justly cal- kilate what'H come on't. The Httle un takes after my side, now : she's twice as 'cute as Tom. Too 'cute for a woman, I'm afraid," continued Mr Tulli- ver, turning his head dubiously first on one side and

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 13

then on the other. " It's no mischief much while she's a little un, but an over-'cute woman's no bet- ter nor a long-tailed sheep — she'll fetch none the bigger price for that."

" Yes, it is a mischief while she's a little un, Mr Tulliver, for it all runs to naughtiness. How to keep her in a clean pinafore two hours together passes my cunning. An' now you put me i' mind," continued Mrs Tulliver, rising and going to the window, " I don't know where she is now, an' it's pretty nigh tea-time. Ah, I thought so — wanderin' up an' down by the water, like a wild thing : she'll tumble in some day."

Mrs Tulliver rapped the window sharply, beck- oned, and shook her head, — a process which she repeated more than once before she returned to her chair.

"You talk o' 'cuteness, Mr Tulliver," she ob- served as she sat down, " but I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things ; for if I send her up-stairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all the while I'm waiting for her down- stairs. That niver run i' my family, thank God, no more nor a brown skin as makes her look like a

14 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

mulatter. I don't like to fly i' the face o' Provi- dence, but it seems hard as I should have but one gell, an' her so comical."

"Pooh, nonsense!" said Mr TuUiver, "she's a straight black-eyed wench as anybody need wish to see. I don't know i' what she's behind other folks's children ; and she can read almost as well as the parson.''

" But her hair won't curl all I can do with it, and she's so franzy about having it put i' paper, and I've such work as never was to make her stand and have it pinched with th' irons."

" Cut it off — cut it off short," said the father, rashly.

" How can you talk so, Mr Tulliver ? She's too big a gell, gone nine, and tall of her age, to have her hair cut short; an' there's her cousin Lucy's got a row o' curls round her head, an' not a hair out o' place. It seems hard as my sister Deane should have that pretty child ; I'm sure Lucy takes more after me nor my own child does. Maggie, Maggie," continued the mother, in a tone of half-coaxing fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered the room, "where's the use o' my telling you to keep away from the water ? You'll tumble in and be drownded some day, an' then you'll be sorry you didn't do as mother told you."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 15

Maggie's hair, as she threw off her bonnet, pain- fully confirmed her mother's accusation : Mrs Tul- liver, desiring her daughter to have a curled crop, "like other folks's children," had had it cut too short in front to be pushed behind the ears ; and as it was usually straight an hour after it had been taken out of paper, Maggie was incessantly tossing her head to keep the dark heavy locks out of her gleaming black eyes — an action which gave her very much the air of a small Shetland pony.

" 0 dear, 0 dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin' of, to throw your bonnet down there ? Take it up-stairs, there's a good gell, an' let your hair be brushed, an' put your other pinafore on, an' change your shoes — do, for shame ; an' come an' go on with your patchwork, like a little lady."

" 0 mother," said Maggie, in a vehemently cross tone, " I don't want to do my patchwork."

" What ! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your aunt Gl egg?"

"It's foolish work," said Maggie, with a toss of her mane, — " tearing things to pieces to sew 'em together again. And I don't want to do anything for my aunt Glegg — I don't like her."

Exit Maggie, dragging her bonnet by the string, while Mr Tulliver laughs audibly.

16 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"I wonder at you, as you'll laugh at her, Mr Tulliver,'' said the mother, with feeble fretful- ness in her tone. " You encourage her i' naughti- ness. An* her aunts will have it as it's me spoils her."

Mrs Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person — never cried, when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and pins ; and from the cradle upwards had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted ; in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Eaphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when their strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got a little too old to do with- out clothing. I think they must have been given to feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more and more ineffectual.

CHAPTER III.

ME EILEY GIVES HIS ADVICE CONCEENING A SCHOOL FOR TOM.

The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt- frill, taking his brandy-and-water so pleasantly with liis 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 honhommie towards simple country acquaintances of hospitable habits. Mr Eiley spoke of such ac- quaintances kindly as " people of the old school"

The conversation had come to a pause. Mr Tul- liver, 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

VOL. I. B

18 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

been any dispute at all about tbe 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 un- assisted intellect, and had arrived at several ques- tionable conclusions ; among the rest, that rats, weevils, and lawyers were created by Old Harry. Unhappily he had no one to tell him that this was rampant Manichasism, else he might have seen his error. But to-day it was clear that the good prin- ciple was triumphant : this aftair 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 liis 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

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 19

Eiley'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 waggon in a hurry, you may light on an awkward corner. Mr Riley, mean- while, 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 TuUiver 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

20 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

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 mis- chief, or at all events determined to fly at any one who threatened it towards 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 Ladyday, 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 Eiley, *' there's no greater ad- vantage 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,

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 21

IVe seen enough o' that wi' sons. I'll niver 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 0* mine. Pretty well if he gets it when I'm dead an' gone. I shan't be put off wi' spoon-meat afore I've lost my teeth/'

This was evidently a point on which l^Ir TuUiver felt strongly, and the impetus which had given un- usual rapidity and emphasis to his speech, showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterwards 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 tra- gic 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 Avithin 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

22 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

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 twink- ling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr Eiley, as though Maggie couldn't hear, " She under- stands 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,

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 23

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 colour went without hesi- tation to Mr Eiley's elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one comer and tossing back her mane, while she said,

" 0, I'll tell you what that means. It's a dread- ful 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 dread- ful 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.

24 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

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 Eiley. " How came it among your books, Tulliver ? "

Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said,

"Why, it's one o' the books I bought at Part- ridge'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" (JMr 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 patron-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 25

ising tone, as he patted Maggie on the head, " I ad- vise you to put by the ' History of the Devil/ and read some prettier book. Have you no prettier books ? "

"0 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 ' iEsop's Fables,' and a book about kangaroos and things, and the ' Pilgrim's Progress.' " . . . .

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

" Well, but there's a great deal about the devil in that," said Maggie, triumphantly, " and 111 show you the picture of him in his true shape, as he fought with Christian."

Maggie ran in an instant to the comer 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 Kiley, "and Tom coloured 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."

26 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"Go, go!" said Mr Tulliver, peremptorily, be- ginning to feel rather uncomfortable at these free remarks on the persona] 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, towards which she had an occasional fit of fondness in Tom's absence, neglecting its toilette, 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 Tul- liver, 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 a-goin' to be told the rights o' things by my own

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 27

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 breed- ing you stupid lads and 'cute wenches, till it's like as if the world was turned topsy-turvy. It's an un- common 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

28 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

held my own wi' the best of 'em ; but things have got so twisted round and wrapped up i' unreason- able words, as arn't a bit like 'em, as I'm clean at fault, often an' often. Everything winds about so — the more straightforrard you are, the more you're puzzled.''

Mr Tulliver took a draught, swallowed it slowly, and shook his head in a melancholy manner, con- scious 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 Kiley. " 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 daresay, now, you know of a school as 'ud be just the thing for Tom," said Mr Tulliver, not diverted from his purpose by any sympatliy with Mr Eijey's deficiency of ready cash.

Mr Eiley took a pinch of snufF, and kept Mr Tulliver in suspense by a silence that seemed deli- berative, before he said —

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

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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 Tulli- ver had been watching his friend's oracular face be- came 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, senten- tiously, shutting his mouth close, and looking at Mr Tulliver to observe the efiect 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.''

30 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"Ah?" said Mr TuUiver, 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 0* pudding ?" said Mrs Tulliver, who was now in her place again. " He's such a boy for pudding as never was ; an' a gTOwing boy like that — it's dreadful to think o' their stintin' him."

" And what money 'ud he want ? '' said Mr Tul- liver, 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 hun- dred and fifty with his youngest pupils, and he's not to be mentioned with S telling, the man I speak of I know, on good authority, that one of the chief people at Oxford said, ' Stelling might get the highest honours if he chose." But he didn't care about university honours. He's a quiet man — not noisy."

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"Ah, a deal better — a deal better," said Mr Tul- liver; "but a hundred and fifty's an uncommon price. I never thought o' payin 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 Tul- liver in the interval, " an' I've no opinion o' house- keepers. 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 mar- ried to as nice a little woman as any man need wi.sh 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

32 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

good Mudport family, and it's not every oiFer that would have been acceptable in that quarter. But Stelling 's not an everyday man. Eather 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 repre- sentation."

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

" 0 my dear Tulliver," said Mr Eiley, " you're

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quite under a mistake about the clergy ; all the best schoolmasters are of the clergy. The school- masters who are not clergymen, are a very low set of men generally "...

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

" To be sure — men who have failed in other trades, most likely. TNow a clergyman is a gentle- man 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 book- men ; 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 Stell- ing, * I want my son to be a thorough arithmeti- cian,' and you may leave the rest to him."

Mr Eiley paused a moment, while Mr Tulliver, somewhat 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

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34 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window."

" Ay, that's true," said Mr Tulliver, almost con- vinced now that the clergy must be the best of schoolmasters.

"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do for you," said Mr Eiley, " and I wouldn't do it for everybody. Ill see Stelling's father-in-law, or drop him a line when I get back to Brassing, to say that you wish to place your boy with his son-in-law, and I daresay Stell- ing will write to you, and send you his terms."

"But there's no hurry, is there?" said Mrs Tul- liver ; " for I hope, Mr Tulliver, you won't let Tom begin at his new school before Midsummer. He bfegan 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' Michaelmas day, else you'll have a poor tap," said Mr Tulliver, winking and smiling at Mr Eiley 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 arrange- ment 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

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 35

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 Mid- summer, 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 un- perceived 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 ? shan't we ever go to see him ? "

" I don't know, my wench," said the father, tend- erly. " Ask Mr Kiley ; he knows."

Maggie came round promptly in front of Mr RUey, and said, " How far is it, please sir ? "

" 0, 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 Eiley : it was evident he thought her silly and of no consequence.

" Hush, Maggie, for shame of you, asking ques-

36 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

tions 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 Eiley. " 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 Eiley from the labour of suggesting some solution or compromise^ — a labour which he would otherwise doubtless have under- taken ; for, as you perceive, he was a man of very obliging manners. And he had really given him- self the trouble of recommending Mr Stelling to his friend Tulliver without any positive expectation of a solid, definite advantage resulting to himself, not- withstanding 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

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 37

end in view, is certain to waste its energies on imaginary game. Plotting covetousness and de- liberate contrivance, in order to compass a self- ish 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 etvsy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbours 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 neutralised by small extravagancies, 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 Eiley was a man of business, and not cold towards his own interest, yet even he was more under the influence of small promptings than of far-sighted designs. He had no private under- standing with the Kev. 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 fdend Tulliver. But he believed !Mr Stelling

38 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

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 com- prehension 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 jEneid, but it had ceased to be distinctly recognisable 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 ma- thematicians. But a man who had had a uni^sersity 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 Timp- son's, for Timpson was one of the most useful and

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influential men in the parish, and had a good deal of business, which he knew how to put into the right hands. Mr Kiley 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 school- master whom he had any ground for recommending in preference : why then should he not recommend Stelling ? His friend TuUiver 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

40 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

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 TuUiver had in the end declined to send Tom to Stelling, Mr Eiley would have thought his friend of the old school a thoroughly pig-headed fellow.

If you blame Mr Eiley 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 ex- pected 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 in- convenient parasite on an animal towards whom she has otherwise no ill-will. What then ? We admire her care for the parasite. If Mr Eiley 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

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 41

been so well for the reverend gentleman. Consider, too, that all the pleasant little dim ideas and compla- cencies— of standing well with Timpson, of dispens- ing 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

CHAPTER IV.

TOM IS EXPECTED.

It was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Tom home from the academy ; but the morning was too wet, Mrs Tulliver said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Maggie took the opposite view very strongly, and it was a direct consequence of this difference of opinion that when her mother was in the act of brushing out the reluctant black crop, Maggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near — in the vindictive determina- tion that there should be no more chance of curls that day.

" Maggie, Maggie," exclaimed Mrs Tulliver, sit- ting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, " what is to become of you if you're so naughty ? Ill tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 43

they come next week, and they'll never love you any more. 0 dear, 0 dear ! look at your clean pin- afore, wet from top to bottom. Folks 'ull think it's a judgment on me as I've got such a child — they'll think I've done summat wicked.''

Before this remonstrance was finished, Maggie was already out of hearing, making her way towards the great attic that ran under the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggie's favourite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold ; here she fretted out all her ill-humours, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs ; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks ; but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Maggie's nine years of earthly struggle ; that luxury of vengeance having been sug- gested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual, for the Fetish on

44 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

that occasion represented aunt Glegg. But immedi- ately afterwards Maggie had reflected that if she drove many nails in, she would not be so well able to fancy that the head was hurt when she knocked it against the wall, nor to comfort it, and make be- lieve to poultice it, when her fury was abated ; for even aunt Glegg would be pitiable when she had been hurt very much, and thoroughly humiliated, so as to beg her niece's pardon. Since then she had driven no more nails in, but had soothed herself by alternately grinding and beating the wooden head against the rough brick of the great chimneys that made two square pillars supporting the roof. That was what she did this morning on reaching the attic, sobbing all the while with a passion that expelled every other form of consciousness — even the memory of the grievance that had caused it. As at last the sobs were getting quieter, and the grind- ing less fierce, a sudden beam of sunshine, falling through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten shelves, made her throw away the Fetish and run to the window. The sun was really breaking out ; the sound of the mill seemed cheerful again ; the granary doors were open ; and there was Yap, the queer white-and-brown terrier, with one ear turned back, trotting about and sniffing vaguely as if he

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 45

were in search of a companion. It was irresistible. Maggie tossed her hair back and ran down-stairs, seized her bonnet without putting it on, peeped, and then dashed along the passage lest she should en- counter her mother, and was quickly out in the yard, whirling round like a Pythoness, and singing as she whirled, " Yap, Yap, Tom*s coming home ! " while Yap danced and barked round her, as much as to say, if there was any noise wanted he was the dog for it.

"Hegh, hegh. Miss, you'll make yourself giddy, an' tumble down T the dirt," said Luke, the head miller, a tall broad-shouldered man of forty, black- eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general meali- ness, like an auricula.

Maggie paused in her whirling and said, stagger- ing a little, " 0 no, it doesn't make me giddy, Luke • may I go into the mill with you ? "

Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, and often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark eyes flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the unresting motion of the great stones, giving her a dim delicious awe as at the presence of an uncon- trollable force — the meal for ever pouring, pouring — the fine white powder softening all surfaces, and

46 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

making the very spider-nets look like a faery lace- work — the sweet pure scent of the meal — all helped to make Maggie feel that the mill was a little world apart from her outside everyday life. The spiders were especially a subject of speculation with her. She wondered if they had any relations out- side the mill, for in that case there must be a pain- ful difficulty in their family intercourse — a fat and floury spider, accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal, must sufier a little at a cousin's table where the fly was au naturel, and the lady-spiders must be mutually shocked at each other's appearance. But the part of the mill she liked best was the top- most story— the corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps of grain, which she could sit on and slide down continually. She was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with Luke, to whom she was very communicative, wishing him to think well of her understanding, as her father did.

Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her posi- tion with him on the present occasion, for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was requisite in mill-society —

" I think you never read any book but the Bible — <aidyou, Luke?"

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" Nay, Miss — an' not much o' that," said Luke, with great frankness. "I'm no reader, I arn't."

" But if I lent you one of my books, Luke ? I've not got any 'very pretty books that would be easy for you to read; but there's 'Pug's Tour of Europe' — that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn't understand the reading, the pictures would help you — they show the looks and ways of the people, and what they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you know — and one sitting on a barrel."

" Nay, Miss, Fn no opinion o' Dutchmen. There ben't much good i* knowin' about them"

"But they're our fellow-creatures, Luke — we ought to know about our fellow-creatures."

" Not much o' fellow-creaturs, I think. Miss ; all I know — my old master, as war a knowin' man, used to say, says he, ' K e'er I sow my wheat wi'out brinin', I'm a Dutchman,' says he ; an' that war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I arn't goin' to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There's fools enoo — an' rogues enoo — wi'out lookin' i' books for em."

" 0, well," said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke's unexpectedly decided views about Dutchmen, " per- haps you would like ' -Animated Nature ' better —

48 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

that's not Dutclimen, you know, but elephants, and kangaroos, and the civet cat, and the sun-fish, and a bird sitting on its tail — I forget its name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn't you like to know about them, Luke ? "

" Nay, Miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' com — I can't do wi' knowin' so many things be- sides my work. That's what brings folk to the gallows — knowin' everything but what they'n got to get their bread by. An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's printed i' the books : them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i' the streets."

" Why, you're like my brother Tom, Luke," said Maggie, wishing to turn the conversation agree- ably; "Tom's not fond of reading. I love Tom so dearly, Luke — better than anybody else in the world. When he grows up, I shall keep his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell him everything he doesn't know. But I think Tom's clever, for all he doesn't like books : he makes beau- tiful whipcord and rabbit-pens."

" Ah," said Luke, " but he'll be fine an' vexed, as the rabbits are all dead."

" Dead ! " screamed Maggie, jumping up from her sliding seat on the com. " 0 dear, Luke ! What !

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the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe that Tom spent all his money to buy ? "

" As dead as moles," said Luke, fetching his com- parison from the immistakable corpses nailed to the stable-wall.

" 0 dear, Luke," said Maggie, in a piteous tone, while the big tears rolled down her cheek ; " Tom told me to take care of 'em, and I forgot. What shall I do?"

" Well, you see. Miss, they were in that far tool- house, an' it was nobody's business to see to 'em. I reckon Master Tom told Harry to feed 'em, but there's no countin' on Harry — he's a offal creatur as iver come about the primises, he is. He remembers nothing but his own inside — an' I wish it 'ud gripe him."

" 0, Luke, Tom told me to be sure and remember the rabbits every day ; but how could I, when they did not come into my head, you know ? 0, he will be so angry with me, I know he will, and so sorry about his rabbits — and so am I sorry. 0, what shall 1 do V

" Don't you fret, Miss," said Luke, soothingly, "they're nash things, them lop-eared rabbits — they'd happen ha' died, if they'd been fed. Things out o' natur niver thrive : God A'mighty doesn't like 'em.

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He made the rabbits' ears to lie back, an' it's notbin' but contrairiness to make 'em hing down like a mastiff dog's. Master Tom 'ull know better nor buy such things another time. Don't you fret, Miss. Will you come along home wi' me, and see my wife? I'm a-goin' this minute."

The invitation offered an agreeable distraction to Maggie's grief, and her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Luke's side to his pleasant cot- tage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and with the added dignity of a lean-to pig-sty, close by the brink of the Kipple. Mrs Moggs, Luke's wife, was a decidedly agreeable acquaintance. She ex- hibited her hospitality in bread and treacle, and possessed various works of art. Maggie actually forgot that she had any special cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a chair to look at a re- markable series of pictures representing the Prodigal Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except that, as might have been expected from his defective moral character, he had not, like that accomplished hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense with a wig. But the indefinable weight the dead rabbits had left on her mind caused her to feel more than usual pity for the career of this weak young man, par- ticularly when she looked at the picture where he

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leaned against a tree with a flaccid appearance, his knee-breeches unbuttoned and his wig awry, while the swine, apparently of some foreign breed, seemed to insult him by their good spirits over their feast of husks.

" I'm very glad his father took him back again — raren't you, Luke ? " she said. " For he was very sorry, you know, and wouldn't do wrong again."

" Eh, Miss," said Luke, " he'd be no great shakes, I doubt, let's feyther do what he would for him."

That was a painful thought to Maggie, and she wished much that the subsequent history of the young man had not been left a blank

CHAPTER V.

TOM COMES HOME.

Tom was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another fluttering heart besides Maggie's when it was late enough for the sound of the gig-wheels to be expected ; for if Mrs TuUiver had a strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came — that quick light bowling of the gig- whcels — and in spite of the wind, which was blow- ing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs Tulliver's curls and cap-strings, she came out- side the door, and even held her hand on Maggie's offending head, forgetting all the griefs of the morning.

" There he is, my sweet lad ! But, Lord ha' mercy ! he's got never a collar on ; it's been lost on the road, I'll be bound, and spoilt the set."

Mrs TuUiver stood with her arms open ; Maggie jumped first on one leg and then on the other ; while

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Tom descended from the gig, and said, with mas- culine reticence as to the tender emotions, " Hallo ! Yap — what ! are you there ?"

Nevertheless he submitted to be kissed willingly- enough, though Maggie hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his blue-grey eyes wan- dered towards the croft and the lambs and the river, where he promised himself that he would begin to fish the first thing to-morrow morning. He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and, at twelve or thirteen years of age, look as much alike as goslings : — a lad with light-brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, foU lips, indeterminate nose and eyebrows — a physiognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything but the generic character of boyhood ; as difierent as possible from poor Maggie's phiz, which Nature seemed to have moulded and coloured with the most decided in- tention. But that same Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of open- ness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. Under these average boyish physiog- nomies that she seems to turn ojff by the gross, she conceals some of her most rigid, inflexible purposes,

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some of her most unmodifiable characters ; and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this pink-and-white bit of masculinity with the in- determinate features.

"Maggie," said Tom, confidentially, taking her into a corner, as soon as his mother was gone out to examine his box, and the warm parlour had taken off the chill he had felt from the long drive, " you don't know what I've got in my pockets," nodding his head up and dovm as a means of rousing her sense of mystery.

"No," said Maggie. "How stodgy they look, Tom ! Is it marls (marbles) or cobnuts ?" Maggie's heart sank a little, because Tom always said it was " no good " playing with her at those games — she played so badly.

" Marls ! no ; I've swopped all my marls with the little fellows, and cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only when the nuts are green. But see here !" He drew something half out of his right-hand pocket.

"What is it?" said Maggie, in a whisper. "I can see nothing but a bit of yellow."

"Why it's . . . a . . . new. . . guess, Maggie ! "

" 0, 1 can't guess, Tom," said Maggie, impatiently.

" Don't be a spitfire, else I won't tell you," said

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Tom, thrusting his hand back into his pocket, and looking determined.

" No, Tom," said Maggie, imploringly, laying hold of the arm that was held stiffly in the pocket. " I'm not cross, Tom ; it was only because I can't bear guessing. Please be good to me."

Tom's arm slowly relaxed, and he said, "Well, then, it's a new fish-line — two new uns — one for you, Maggie, all to yourself. I wouldn't go halved in the tofiee and gingerbread on purpose to save the money ; and Gibson and Spouncer fought with me because I wouldn't. And here's hooks ; see here ! .... I say, won't we go and fish to-morrow down by Eound Pool ? And you shall catch your own fish, Maggie, and put the worms on, and everything — wont it be fun?"

Maggie's answer was to throw her arms round Tom's neck and hug him, and hold her cheek against his without speaking, while he slowly unwound some of the line, saying, after a pause,

" Wasn't I a good brother, now, to buy you a line all to yourself ? You know, I needn't have bought it, if I hadn't Hked,"

" Yes, very, very good . . . . I cZo love you, Toul*'

Tom had put the line back in his pocket, and was looking at the hooks one by one, before he spoke again

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" And the fellows fought me, because I wouldn't give in about the toffee/'

"0 dear! I wish they wouldn't fight at your school, Tom. Didn't it hurt you ? "

" Hurt me ? no," said Tom, putting up the hooks again, taking out a large pocket-knife, and slowly opening the largest blade, which he looked at medi- tatively as he rubbed his finger along it. Then he added —

"I gave Spouncer a black eye, I know — that's what he got by wanting to leather me ; I wasn't going to go halves because anybody leathered me."

" 0 how brave you are, Tom ! I think you're like Samson. If there came a lion roaring at me, I think you'd fight him — wouldn't you, Tom ? "

" How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing ? There's no lions, only in the shows."

" No ; but if we were in the lion countries — I mean, in Africa, where it's very hot — the lions eat people there. I can show it you in the book where I read it."

" Well, I should get a gun and shoot him."

" But if you hadn't got a gun — we might have gone out, you know, not thinking — just as we go fishing ; and then a great lion might run towards

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US roaring, and we couldn't get away from him. What should you do, Tom ?"

Tom paused, and at last turned away contemptu- ously, saying, *' But the lion isn't coming. What's the use of talking ? ''

" But I like to fancy how it would be," said Maggie, following him. " Just think what you would do, Tom."

" 0 don't bother, Maggie ! you're such a siUy — I shall go and see my rabbits/'

Maggie's heart began to flutter with fear. She dared not tell the sad truth at once, but she walked after Tom in trembling silence as he went out, thinking how she could tell him the news so as to soften at once his sorrow and his anger; for Maggie dreaded Tom's anger of all things — it was quite a different anger from her own.

" Tom," she said, timidly, when they were out of doors, " how much money did you give for your rabbits?"

" Two half-crowns and a sixpence," said Tom, promptly.

" I think I've got a great deal more than that in my steel purse up-stairs. Pll ask mother to give it you."

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"What for?" said Tom. "I don't want your money, you silly thing. I've got a great deal more money than you, because I'm a boy. I always have half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas boxes, because I shall be a man, and you only have five-shilling pieces, because you're only a girl''

" Well, but, Tom — if mother would let me give you two half-crowns and a sixpence out of my purse to put into your pocket and spend, you know ; and buy some more rabbits with it ? "

" More rabbits ? I don't want any more."

" 0, but Tom, they're all dead."

Tom stopped immediately in his walk and turned round towards Maggie. " You forgot to feed 'em, then, and Harry forgot ? " he said, his colour height- ening for a moment, but soon subsiding. " 111 pitch * into Harry — I'll have him turned away. And I don't love you, Maggie. You shan't go fishing with me to-morrow. I told you to go and see the rabbits every day." He walked on again.

" Yes, but I forgot — and I couldn't help it, indeed, Tom. I'm so very sorry," said Maggie, while the tears rushed fast.

" You're a naughty girl," said Tom, severely, " and I'm sorry I bought you the fish-line. I don't love you."

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" 0, Tom, it's very cruel/' sobbed Maggie. " I'd forgive you, if you forgot anythiug — I wouldn't mind what you did — I'd forgive you and love you/'

" Yes, you're a silly — but I never do forget things — / don't."

" 0, please forgive me, Tom ; my heart will break," said Maggie, shaking with sobs, clinging to Tom's arm, and laying her wet cheek on his shoulder.

Tom shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a peremptory tone, " Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren't I a good brother to you ? "

" Ye-ye-es," sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling convulsedly.

" Didn't I think about your fish -line all this quarter, and mean to buy it, and saved my money o' purpose, and wouldn't go halves in the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn't ? "

" Ye-ye-es . . . and I . . . lo-lo-love you so, Tom."

" But you're a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat di^ag my fish-line down when I'd set you to Avatch it, and you pushed your head through my kite, all for nothing."

" But I didn't mean," said Maggie ; " I couldn't help it."

"Yes, you could," said Tom, "if you'd minded

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what you were doing. And you're a naughty girl, and you shan't go fishing with me to-morrow."

With this terrible conclusion, Tom ran away from Maggie towards the mill, meaning to greet Luke there, and complain to him of Harry.

Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two ; then she turned round and ran into the house, and up to her attic, where she sat on the floor, and laid her head against the worm- eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Tom was come home, and she had thought how happy she should be — and now he was cruel to her. What use was anything, if Tom didn't love her ? 0, he was very cruel ! Hadn't she wanted to give him the money, and said how very sorry she was ? She knew she was naughty to her mother, but she had never been naughty to Tom — had never meant to be naughty to him.

" 0, he is cruel ! " Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the attic. She never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish ; she was too miserable to be angry.

These bitter sorrows of childhood ! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has npt yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and

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the space from summer to summer seems measure- less.

Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking of her. Well, then, she would stay up there and starve herself — hide herself behind the tub, and stay there all night ; and then they would all be frightened, and Tom would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought in the pride of her heart, as she crept behind the tub ; but presently she began to cry again at the idea that they didn't mind her being there. If she went down again to Tom now — would he forgive her? — perhaps her father would be there, and he would take her part. But, then, she wanted Tom to forgive her because he loved her, not because his father told him. No, she would never go down if Tom didn't come to fetch her. This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need in poor Maggie's nature, began to wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it. She crept from behind her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but just then she heard a quick footstep on the stairs.

Tom had been too much interested in his talk with Luke, in going the round of the premises,

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walking in and out where lie pleased, and whittling sticks without any particular reason, except that he didn't whittle sticks at school, to think of Maggie and the effect his anger had produced on her. He meant to punish her, and that business having been performed, he occupied himself with other matters, like a practical person. But when he had been called in to tea, his father said, " Why, where's the little wench ?" and Mrs TuUiver, almost at the same moment, said, " Where's your little sister ? " — both of them having supposed that Maggie and Tom had been together all the afternoon.

" I don't know," said Tom. He didn't want to " tell" of Maggie, though he was angry with her ; for Tom TulKver was a lad of honour.

" What ! hasn't she been playing with you all this while ?" said the father. " She'd been thinking o' nothing but your coming home."

" I haven't seen her this two hours," says Tom, commencing on the plumcake.

" Goodness heart ! she's got drownded," ex- claimed Mrs TuUiver, rising from her seat and run- ning to the window. " How could you let her do so?" she added, as became a fearful woman, ac- cusing she didn't know whom of she didn't know what.

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" Nay, nay, she's none drownded," said Mr Tul- liver. "YouVe been naughty to her, I doubt, Tom?"

" I'm sure I haven't, father," said Tom, indignantly. "I think she's in the house/'

"Perhaps up in that attic," said Mrs Tulliver, "a-singing and talking to herself, and forgetting all about meal-times."

"You go and fetch her down, Tom," said Mr Tulliver, rather sharply, his perspicacity or hij fatherly fondness for Maggie making him suspect that the lad had been hard upon "the little un," else she would never have left his side. " And be good to her, do you hear ? Else I'll let you know better/'

Tom never disobeyed his father, for Mr Tulliver was a peremptory man, and, as he said, would never let anybody get hold of his whip-hand; but he went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plumcake, and not intending to reprieve Maggie's punishment, which was no more than she de- served. Tom was only tliirteen, and had no de- cided views in grammar and arithmetic, regarding them for the most part as open questions, but he was particularly clear and positive on one point — namely, that he would punish everybody who de-

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served it: why, he wouldn't have minded being punished himself, if he deserved it; but, then, he never did deserve it.

It was Tom's step, then, that Maggie heard on the stairs, when her need of love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going down with her swollen eyes and dishevelled hair to beg for pity. At least her father would stroke her head and say, " Never mind, my wench." It is a wonderful sub- duer, this need of love — this hunger of the heart — as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.

But she knew Tom's step, and her heart began to beat violently with the sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of the stairs and said, " Maggie, you're to come down.'' But she rushed to him and clung round his neck, sobbing, " 0 Tom, please forgive me — I can't bear it — I will always be good — always remember things — do love me — please, dear Tom ? "

We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in weU-bred phrases, and in this way pre- serve a dignified alienation, showing much firmnes? on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other.

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We no longer approximate in our behaviour to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but con- duct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilised society. Maggie and Tom were stni very much like young animals, and so she could rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a random, sobbing way; and there were tender fibres in the lad that had been used to answer to Maggie's fondling ; so that he behaved with a weakness quite inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as much as she deserved : he actually began to kiss her in return, and say —

" Don't cry, then, Magsie — here, eat a bit o' cake.'

Maggie's sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit a piece ; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company, and they ate together and rubbed each other's cheeks and brows and noses together, while they ate, with a humiliat- ing resemblance to t\yo friendly ponies.

" Come along, Magsie, and have tea," said Tom at last, when there was no more cake except what was down-stairs.

So ended the sorrows of this day, and the next morning Maggie was trotting with her own fishing- rod in one hand and a handle of the basket in the other, stepping always, by a peculiar gift, in the

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muddiest places, and looking darkly radiant from under her beaver-bonnet because Tom was good to her. She had told Tom, however, that she should like him to put the worms on the hook for her, al- though she accepted his word when he assured her that worms couldn't feel (it was Tom's private opinion that it didn't much matter if they did). He knew all about worms, and fish, and those things ; and what birds were mischievous, and how padlocks opened, and which way the handles of the gates were to be lifted. Maggie thought this sort of knowledge was very wonderful — much more difficult than remembering what was in the books ; and she was rather in awe of Tom's superiority, for he was the only person who called her knowledge " stuff," and did not feel surprised at her cleverness. Tom, indeed, was of opinion that Maggie was a silly little thing ; all girls were silly — they couldn't throw a stone so as to hit anything, couldn't do anything with a pocket-knife, and were frightened at frogs. Still he was very fond of his sister, and meant always to take care of her, make her his house- keeper, and punish her when she did wrong.

They were on their way to the Bound Pool — that wonderful fool, which the floods had made a long while ago : no one knew how deep it was ; and it

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was mysterious, too, that it should be almost a per- fect round, framed in with willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you got close to the brink. The sight of the old favourite spot always heightened Tom's good-humour, and he spoke to Maggie in the most amicable whispers, as he opened the precious basket and prepared their tackle. He threw her line for her, and put the rod into her hand. Maggie thought it probable that the small fish would come to her hook, and the large ones to Tom's. But she had forgotten all about the fish, and was looking dreamily at the glassy water, when Tom said, in a loud whisper, " Look, look, Maggie!'' and came running to prevent her from snatching her line away.

Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing something wrong, as usual, but presently Tom drew out her line and brought a large tench bouncing on the gTass.

Tom was excited.

" 0 Magsie ! you little duck I Empty the basket."

Maggie was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was enough that Tom called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar her delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences.

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when she listened to the light dipping sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle rustling, as if the willows and the reeds and the water had their happy whis- perings also. Maggie thought it would make a very- nice heaven to sit by the pool in that way, and never be scolded. She never knew she had a bite till Tom told her, but she liked fishing very much.

It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them : they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would always be like the holidays ; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the mill with its booming — the great chestnut-tree under which they played at houses — their own little river, the Eipple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing the water-rats, while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds, which she forgot and dropped afterwards — above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man — these things would always be just the same to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who lived on any other spot

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of the globe; and Maggie, when she read about Christiana passing " the river over which there is no bridge," always saw the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.

Life did change for Tom and Maggie ; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, — if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the gTass — the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows — the same redbreasts that we used to call " God's birds," because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known ?

The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet — what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these well-

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remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capri- cious hedgerows — such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associa- tions the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshiae on the deep- bladed grass to-day, might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.

CHAPTER VI.

THE AUNTS AND UNCLES AEE COMING.

It was Easter week, and Mrs Tulliver's cheese-cakes were more exquisitely light than usual; "a pufif 0* wind 'ud make *em blow about like feathers," Kezia the house-maid said, — feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make such pastry ; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family party, even if it had not been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister Pullet about Tom's going to school

"Fd as lief not invite sister Deane this time," said Mrs Tulliver, " for she's as jealous and having as can be, and 's allays trying to make the worst o' my poor children to their aunts and uncles."

" Yes, yes," said Mr Tulliver, " ask her to come. I never hardly get a bit o' talk with Deane now : we haven't had him this six months. What's it

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matter what she says? — ^my children need be be- holding to nobody/'

" That's what you allays say, Mr Tulliver ; but I'm sure there's nobody o' your side, neither aunt nor uncle, to leave 'em so much as a five-pound note for a leggicy. And there's sister Glegg, and sister Pullet too, saving money unknown — for they put by all their own interest and butter-money too ; their husbands buy 'em everything/' Mrs Tulliver was a mild woman, but even a sheep will face about a little when she has lambs.

" Tchuh ! " said Mr Tulliver. " It takes a big loaf when there's many to breakfast. What signifies your sisters' bits o' money when they've got half- a-dozen newies and nieces to divide it among ? And your sister Deane won't get 'em to leave all to one, I reckon, and make the country cry shame on 'em when they are dead ? "

" I don't know what she won't get 'em to do," said Mrs Tulliver, " for my children are so awk'ard wi' their aunts and uncles. Maggie's ten times naughtier when they come than she is other days, and Tom doesn't like 'em, bless him — though it's more nat'ral in a boy than a geU. And there's Lucy Deane 's such a good child — you may set her on a stool, and there she'll sit for an hour together, and never ofier

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to get off. I can't help loving the child as if she was my own ; and I'm sure she's more like my child than sister Deane's, for she'd allays a very poor colour for one of our family, sister Deane had."

"Well, weU, if you're fond o' the child, ask her father and mother to bring her with 'em. And won't you ask their aunt and uncle Moss too ? and some o' their children ?

" 0 dear, Mr Tulliver, why, there'd be eight people besides the children, and I must put two more leaves i' the table, besides reaching down more o' the din- ner-service; and you know as well as I do, as my sisters and your sisters don't suit well together."

"Well, well, do as you like, Bessy," said Mr Tul- liver, taking up his hat and walking out to the mill. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs Tulli- ver on all points imconnected with her family rela- tions ; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed — as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so well — not at an early age, for that was not the prac- tice of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family : particular

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ways of bleaching tlie linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries ; so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar pro- priety in the Dodson family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated : if the illness or trouble was the sufferer's own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanour, and the only bitter circum- stance attending this superiority was a painful in- ability to approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in "strange houses/' always ate dry bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having no confidence in the butter, and

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tliinking that the preserves had probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were some Dodsons less like the family than others — that was admitted; but in so far as they were " kin/' they were of necessity better than those who were " no kin." And it is remarkable that while no individual Dodson was satisfied with any other in- dividual Dodson, each was satisfied, not only with him or her self, but with the Dodsons collectively. The feeblest member of a family — the one who has the least character — is often the merest epitome of the family habits and traditions ; and Mrs Tulliver was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small- beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale : and though she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sis- terly reproaches, it was not in Mrs TulHver to be an innovator on the family ideas. She was thank- ful to have been a Dodson, and to have one child who took after her own family, at least in his fea- tures and complexion, in liking salt and in eating beans, which a Tulliver never did.

In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Tom, and he was as far from appreciating his "kin" on the mother's side as Maggie herself;

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generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the most portable food, when he received timely warning that his amits and uncles were coming ; a moral symptom from which his aunt Glegg deduced the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard on Maggie that Tom always absconded with- out letting her into the secret, but the weaker sex are acknowledged to be serious impedimenta in cases of flight.

On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there were such various and suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy : there was hope in the air. Tom and Maggie made several inroads into the kitchen, and, like other marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of booty.

" Tom,"' said Maggie, as they sat on the boughs of the elder-tree, eating their jam puffs, " shall you run away to-morrow ? "

" No," said Tom, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eyeing the third, which was to be divided between them — "No, I shan't."

" Why, Tom ? Because Lucy's coming ? "

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"No," said Tom, opening his pocket-knife and holding it over the puff, with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.) " What do / care about Lucy ? She's only a girl — she can't play at bandy."

** Is it the tipsy-cake, then ? " said Maggie, exert- ing her hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward towards Tom with her eyes fixed on the hovering knife.

" No, you silly, that'll be good the day after. It's the pudden. I know what the pudden's to be — apricot roll-up — 0 my buttons ! "

With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff and it was in two, but the result was not satisfactory to Tom, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last he said —

" Shut your eyes, Maggie."

"What for?"

" You never mind what for. Shut *em, when I tell you."

Maggie obeyed.

"Now, which '11 you have, Maggie — right hand or left?''

" I'll have that with the jam run out," said Maggie, keeping her eyes shut to please Tom.

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" Why, you don't like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to you fair, but I shan't give it you without. Eight or left — you choose, now. Ha-a-a ! " said Tom, in a tone of exasperation, as Maggie peeped. " You keep your eyes shut, now, else you shan't have any."

Maggie's power of sacrifice did not extend so far ; indeed, I fear she cared less that Tom should enjoy the utmost possible amount of puff, than that he should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite close, till Tom told her to "say which," and then she said, "Left-hand."

"You've got it," said Tom, in rather a bitter tone.

" What ! the bit with the jam run out ? "

" No ; here, take it," said Tom, firmly, handing decidedly the best piece to Maggie,

" 0, please, Tom, have it : I don't mind — I like .the other : please take this. ■'

" No, I shan't," said Tom, almost crossly, begin- ning on his own inferior piece.

Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Tom had finished first, and had to look on while Maggie ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for

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more. Maggie didn't know Tom was looking at her: she was seesawing on the elder bough, lost to almost everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.

" 0, you greedy thing ! " said Tom, when she had swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of view before and after cue's own share of puff is swallowed.

Maggie turned quite pale. " 0, Tom, why didn't you ask me ? "

" I wasn't going to ask you for a bit^ you greedy. You might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit."

" But I wanted you to have it — you know I did," said Maggie, in an injured tone.

" Yes, but I wasn't going to do what wasn't fair, like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you don't punch him for it ; and if you choose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if I go halves, I'll go 'em fair — only I wouldn't be a greedy."

With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough, and threw a stone with a "hoigh !"

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as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agi- tation of his ears and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent dog accepted Tom's attention with as much alacrity as if he had been treated quite generously.

But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery which distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from the most melan- choly chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puflp, and to have saved some of it for Tom. Not but that the pujff was very nice, for Maggie's palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn't have it — and she ate it without thinking — how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes ; but by that time resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation, and she jumped from her bough to look for Tom. He was no longer in the paddock behind the rickyard — where was he likely to be

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gone, and Yap with him ? Maggie ran to the high bank against the great holly-tree, where she could see far away towards the Floss. There was Tom ; but her heart sank again as she saw how far off he was on his way to the great river, and that he had another companion besides Yap — naughty Bob Jakin, whose official, if not natural function, of frightening the birds, was just now at a standstill. Maggie felt sure that Bob was wicked, without very distinctly knowing why; unless it was because Bob's mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, wlio lived at a queer round house down the river ; and once, when Maggie and Tom had wandered thither, there rushed out a brindled dog that wouldn't stop bark- ing ; and when Bob's mother came out after it, and screamed above the barking to tell them not to be frightened, Maggie thought she was scolding them fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Maggie thought it very likely that the round house had snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom ; for she had seen Bob take off his cap to show Tom a little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of young bats : altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats ; VOL. L - F

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and to crown all, when Tom had Bob for a com- panion, he didn't mind about Maggie, and would never let her go with him.

It must be owned that Tom was fond of Bob's company. How could it be otherwise ? Bob knew, directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a swallow's, or a tomtit's, or a yellowhammer's ; he found out all the wasps' nests, and could set all sorts of traps ; he could climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedgehogs and stoats ; and he had courage to do things that were rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after the sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering incog- nito. Such qualities in an inferior, who could always be treated with authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fas- cination for Tom ; and every holiday-time Maggie was sure to have days of grief because he had gone off with Bob.

Well I there was no hope for it : he was gone now, and Maggie could think of no comfort but to sit down by the holly, or wander by the hedge- row, and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just what she should like it to be.

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Maggie's was a troublous life, and this was the form in which she took her opium.

Meanwhile Tom, forgetting all about Maggie and the sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Bob, whom he had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catch- ing in a neighbouring bam. Bob knew all about this particular affair, and spoke of the sport with an enthusiasm which no one who is not either di- vested of all manly feeling, or pitiably ignorant of rat-catching, can fail to imagine. For a person sus- pected of preternatural wickedness. Bob was really not so very villanous-looking ; there was even some- thing agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close- curled border of red hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the con- venience of wading on the slightest notice ; and his virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably " virtue in rags," which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit over- paid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognised (perhaps because it is seen so seldom):

" I know the chap as owns the ferrets," said Bob in a hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keep- ing his blue eyes fixed on the river, like an amphi- bious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in.

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" He lives up the Kennel Yard at Sut Ogg's — ^he does. He's the biggest rot-catcher anywhere — he is. I'd sooner be a rot-catcher nor anything— I would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors ! you mun ha' ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, there's that dog, now ! " Bob continued, pointing with an air of disgust towards Yap, " he's no more good wi' a rot nor nothin'. I see it my- self—I did— at the rot-catchin' i' your feyther's barn.'*

Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn, tucked his tail in and shrank close to Tom's leg, who felt a little hurt for him, but had not the super- human courage to seem behindhand with Bob in contempt for a dog who made so poor a figure.

" No, no,'' he said, " Yap's no good at sport. I'll have regular good dogs for rats and everything, when I've done school"

" Hev ferrets, Measter Tom," said Bob, eagerly, — " them white ferrets wi' pink eyes ; Lors, you might catch your own rots, an' you might put a rot in a cage wi' a ferret, an' see 'em fight — you might. That's what I'd do, I know, an' it 'ud be better fun a'most nor seein' two chaps fight — if it wasn't them chaps as seU cakes an' oranges at the Fair, as the things flew out o* their baskets, an' some o' the cakes

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was smashed . . . But they tasted just as good," added Bob, by way of note or addendum, after a moment's pause.

" But, I say. Bob," said Tom, in a tone of delibera- tion, " ferrets are nasty biting things — they'll bite a fellow without being set on."

" Lors ! why that's the beauty on 'em. If a chap lays hold o' your ferret, he won't be long before he hoUows out a good un — he won't."

At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging of some small body in the water from among the neighbouring bulrushes — if it was not a water-rat. Bob intimated that he was ready to undergo the most unpleasant consequences.

" Hoigh ! Yap — hoigh ! there he is," said Tom, clapping his hands, as the little black snout made its arrowy course to the opposite bank. " Seize him, lad, seize him ! "

Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but declined to plunge, trying whether barking would not answer the purpose just as well

" Ugh ! you coward 1 " said Tom, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Bob abstained from re- mark and passed on, choosing, however, to walk in

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the shallow edge of the overflowing river by way of change.

" He's none so full now, the Floss isn't/' said Bob, as he kicked the water up before him, with an agreeable sense of being insolent to it. " Why, last 'ear, the meadows was all one sheet o' water, they was."

"Ay, but," said Tom, whose mind was prone to see an opposition between statements that were really quite accordant, "but there was a big flood once, when the Eound Pool was made. / know there was, 'cause father says so. And the sheep and cows were all drowned, and the boats went all over the fields ever such a way."

" / don't care about a flood coming said Bob ; " I don't mind the water, no more nor the land. I'd swim — / would."

"Ah, but if you got nothing to eat for ever so long?" said Tom, his imagination becoming quite active under the stimulus of that dread. " When I'm a man, I shall make a boat with a wooden house on the top of it, like Noah's ark, and keep plenty to eat in it — rabbits and things — all ready. And then if the flood came, you know. Bob, I shouldn't mind . . . And I'd take you in, if I saw you swim- ming," he added, in the tone of a benevolent patron.

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" I aren't frighted/' said Bob, to wliom hunger did not appear so appalling. "But I'd get in an' knock the rabbits on th' head when you wanted to eat 'em."

"Ah, and I should have halfpence, and we'd play at heads-and-tails," said Tom, not contemplating the possibility that this recreation might have fewer charms for his mature age. "I'd divide fair to begin with, and then we'd see who'd win."

"I'n got a halfpenny o' my own," said Bob, proudly, coming out of the water and tossing his halfpenny in the air. " Yeads or tails ? "

" Tails," said Tom, instantly fired with the desire to win.

" It's yeads," said Bob, hastily, snatching up the halfpenny as it fell

" It wasn't," said Tom, loudly and peremptorily. " You give me the halfpenny — I've won it fair."

"I shan't," said Bob, holding it tight in his pocket.

" Then I'll make you — see if I don't," said Tom.

"You can't make me do nothing, you can't," said Bob.

"Yes, lean."

" No, you can't."

" I'm master."

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" I don't care for you/' '

"But 111 make you care, you cheat/' said Tom, collaring Bob and shaking him.

" You get out wi' you," said Bob, giving Tom a kick.

Tom's blood was thoroughly up : he went at Bob with a lunge and threw him down, but Bob seized hold and kept it like a cat, and pulled Tom down after him. They struggled fiercely on the ground for a moment or two, till Tom, pinning Bob down by the shoulders, thought he had the mastery.

" You say you'll give me the halfpenny now," he said, with difficulty, while he exerted himself to keep the command of Bob's arms.

But at this moment. Yap, who had been running on before, returned barking to the scene of action, and saw a favourable opportunity for biting Bob's bare leg not only with impunity but with honour. The pain from Yap's teeth, instead of surprising Bob into a relaxation of his hold, gave it a fiercer tenacity, and, with a new exertion of his force, he pushed Tom backward and got uppermost. But now Yap, who could get no sufficient purchase before, set his teeth in a new place, so that Bob, harassed in this way, let go his hold of Tom, and, almost throttling Yap, flung him into the river. By

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this time Tom was up again, and before Bob had quite recovered his balance after the act of swinging Yap, Tom fell upon him, threw him down, and got his knees firmly on Bob's chest

" You give me the halfpenny now,"' said Tom.

"Take it,'' said Bob, sulkily.

" No, I shan't take it ; you give it me."

Bob took the halfpenny out of his pocket, and threw it away from him on the ground.

Tom loosed his hold, and left Bob to rise.

"There the halfpenny lies," he said. "I don't want your halfpenny ; I wouldn't have kept it. But you wanted to cheat : I hate a cheat. I shan't go along with you any more," he added, turning round homeward, not without casting a regret towards the rat-catching and other pleasures which he must re- linquish along with Bob's society.

" You may let it alone, then," Bob called out after him. " I shall cheat if I like ; there's no fun i' play- ing else; and I know where there's a goldfinch's nest, but I'll take care you don't .... An' you're a nasty fightin' turkey-cock, you are . . . ."

Tom walked on without looking round, and Yap followed his example, the cold bath having moder- ated his passions.

" Go along wi' you, then, wi' your drownded dog ;

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I wouldn't own such a dog — I wouldn't," said Bob, getting louder, in a last effort to sustain his defiance. But Tom was not to be provoked into turning round, and Bob's voice began to falter a little as he said,

"An' I'n gi'en you everything, an' showed you everything, an' niver wanted nothin' from you .... An' there's your horn-handed knife, then, as you gi'en me "... . Here Bob flung the knife as far as he could after Tom's retreating footsteps. But it produced no effect, except the sense in Bob's mind that there was a terrible void in his lot, now that knife was gone.

He stood still till Tom had passed through the gate and disappeared behind the hedge. The knife would do no good on the ground there — it wouldn't vex Tom, and pride or resentment was a feeble passion in Bob's mind compared with the love of a pocket- knife. His very fingers sent entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar rough buck's- horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere affection as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades, and they had just been sharpened ! What is life without a pocket-knife to him who has once tasted a higher existence ? No : to throw the handle after the hatchet is a compre-

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liensible act of desperation, but to throw one's pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in every sense a hyperbole, or throwing beyond the mark. So Bob shuiffled back to the spot where the beloved knife lay in the dirt, and felt quite a new pleasure in clutching it again after the temporary separation, in opening one blade after the other, and feeling their edge with his well-hardened thumb. Poor Bob ! he was not sensitive on the point of honour — not a chivalrous character. That fine moral aroma would not have been thought much of by the public opinion of Kennel Yard, which was the very focus or heart of Bob's world, even if it could have made itself perceptible there ; yet, for all that, he was not utterly a sneak and a thief, as our friend Tom had hastily decided.

But Tom, you perceive, was rather a Ehadaman- thine personage, having more than the usual share of boy's justice in him — the justice that desires to hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be hurt, and is troubled with no doubts concerning the exact amount of their deserts. Maggie saw a cloud on his brow when he came home, which checked her joy at his coming so much sooner than she had ex- pected, and she dared hardly speak to him as he stood silently throwing the small gravel-stones into

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the mill-dam. It is not pleasant to give up a rat- catching when you have set your mind on it. But if Tom had told his strongest feeling at that moment, he would have said, " I'd do just the same again." That was his usual mode of viewing his past actions; whereas Maggie was always wishing she had done something different.

CHAPTER VII.

ENTER THE AUNTS AND UNCLES.

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

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curled fronts : Mrs Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various degTees 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 dream- like 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 Tul- liver's, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sisters' feelings gTcatly 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 painting. Mrs Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg's unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the con- sciousness of looking the handsomer for them, naturally administered support : Mrs Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house to-day — untied and

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tilted slightly, of course — a frequent practice of hers when she was on a visit, and happened to be in a severe humour : 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 meet- ing across her well-formed chest, while her long neck was protected by a chevaux-de-frise of miscel- laneous 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-coloured silk-gown must have been ; but from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odour 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 con- tinued. " 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

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sit half an hour before the others came. But if the ways o' the family are altered, it shan't be my fault — ril 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."

" O 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 cheese-cake 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 know your own sister better. I never did eat between meals, and I'm not going to begin. Not but what I hate that non- sense 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 wi' husbands — they're for putting everything off— they'll put the dinner

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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 for- tin i' going to law, and's like 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 be- coming."

With sister Glegg in this humour, there was a cheerful prospect for the day. Mrs Tulliver never went the length of quarrelling with her, any more than a waterfowl that puts out its leg in a depre- cating 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.

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"Mr Tulliver says lie 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 speak- ing 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.

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"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 large be-feathered and be-ribboned bon- net, 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 civilisation — the sight of a fashion- ably drest female in grief. Prom 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 —

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what a long series of gradations ! In the enlight- ened child of civilisation the abandonment charac- teristic 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 doorpost. Perceiving that the tears are hurr3dng fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly backward — a touching gesture, in- dicative, 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 ad- justs 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 doorpost with great nicety, about the latitude of her shoulders (at that

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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 parlour 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 care- fully 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, who- iver she may be," said Mrs Glegg with the prompti- tude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear and decided ; '*' but I can't think who you're talking of, for my part."

"But / know," said Mrs Pullet, sighing and shaking her head ; " and there isn't another such a

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dropsy in the parish. I know as it's old Mrs Sutton o' the Twentylands/'

" Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor mugh acquaint- ance as I've ever heared of," said Mrs Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when any- thing happened to her own " kin," but not on other occasions.

" She's so much acquaintance as IVe 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 ^arish'ners like her, I doubt."

" And they say she'd took as much physic as 'ud fill a waggon," observed Mr Pullet.

" Ah," sighed Mrs Pullet, " she'd another com- plaint 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 iver 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

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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 Prances neither, nor any o* the family as I ever beared of You couldn't fret no more than this, if we'd beared as our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his wiU."

Mrs Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather flattered than indignant at being up- braided for crying too much. It was not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their neigh- bours 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 newy."

" There wasn't much good i' being so rich, then," said Mrs Glegg, " if she'd got none but hus- band's kin to leave it to. It's poor work when

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that's all you've got to pincli 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 re- covered 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 hare-skin 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 imder 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 shill- ing, 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.

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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 up-stairs, sister," said Mrs Tul- liver, 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 up-stairs with her sister Pullet, and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and discussing mil- linery in general. This was part of Bessy's weak- ness that stirred Mrs Glegg's sisterly compassion : Bessy went far too well drest, 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

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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 Pul- let, too, made presents of clothes, but these were always pretty enough to please Maggie as well as her mother. Of all her sisters, Mrs TuUiver cer- tainly preferred her sister Pullet, not without a re- turn 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 imcle Pullet's musical snuff-box. Still, it

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was agreed by the sisters, in Mrs Tulliver's absence, that the Tulliver bipod did not mix well with the Dodson blood ; that, in fact, poor Bessy's children were TuUivers, 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 ]\Irs Tulliver up-stairs, 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 tete-cb-tete 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.

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Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very carelessly, and, coming in with her hair rcyugh 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 her 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.

"0 Lucy," she burst out, after kissing her, "you'll stay with Tom and me, won't you ? 0 kiss her, Tom."

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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 o' their uncles and aunts ? That wasn't the way when / was a little gell."

"Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears," said Mrs Tulliver, looking anxious and melan- choly. 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

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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 crea- tures, 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 com- passionate voice, "you grow wonderful fast. I doubt they'll outgrow their strength," she added, looking over their heads, with a melancholy expres- sion, 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 TuUiver, " 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

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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, blush- ing 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-look- ing 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-labourers 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 TuUiver, 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

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the superior partners in the firm to which he be- longed, 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 Dod- son, who was 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, ship-owning 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 fol- lowed willingly enough.

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" Come up-stairs with me, Tom," she whispered when they were outside the door. " There's some- thing 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.

" 0, yes, there is time for this — do come, Tom."

Tom followed Maggie up-stairs 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.

" 0, my buttons, Maggie, you'll catch it !" ex- claimed 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.

VOL. L H

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" Never mind — ^make haste ! '' said Maggie, giv- ing 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 shears 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 fl.oor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged uneven manner, but with a sense of clear- ness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the open plain.

" 0, Maggie," said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as he laughed, " 0, my buttons, what a queer thing you look ! Look at yourself in the glass — you look like the idiot we throw our nutshells to at school/'

Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly of her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and some- thing 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

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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 the idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, and Maggie's flushed cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a little.

*' 0 Maggie, youll have to go down to dinner directly," said Tom. " 0 my !''

" Don't laugh at me, Tom," said Maggie, in a pas- sionate tone, with an outburst of angiy tears, stamp- ing, 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 down-stairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of the irrevocable which was almost an everyday experience of her small soul. She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done, that it was veiy 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 exao-orerated circumstance of an active imagination. Tom never did the same

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sort of foolish things as Maggie, having a wonder- ful, 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 gig- whip 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 w^ould ; 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

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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, stand- ing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our moUier 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.

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but with an intimate penetration, a revived con- sciousness of what he felt then — when it was so long from one Midsummer to another? what he felt when his schoolfellows 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 Eezia, entering the room hurriedly. " Lawks ! what have you been a-doing ? I niver 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.

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" Get aTvay, Kezia ; I don't want any dinner," said Maggie, resisting Kezia's arm, " I shan't come."

" 0, well, I can't stay. IVe got to wait at din- ner," 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 coma What are you crying for, you little spooney ? "

0, it was dreadful ! Tom was so hard and uncon- cerned : 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, com- forting 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

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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 re- flective 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 legiti- mate influence.

Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks, and slowly she made her way down- stairs. Then she stood leanino^ 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 towards the empty chair. But she had no sooner sat down than she repented, and wished her- self back again.

Mrs Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her, and felt such a " tui'n" that she dropt 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 carv- ing, and Mrs Tulliver thought there was nothing worse in question than a fit of perverseness, which

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was inflicting its own punishment by depriving Magme 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-look- ing, white-haired old gentleman, said —

" Hey-day ! 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 under-tone to Mr Deane, laugh- ing with much enjoyment. "Did you ever know such a little hussy as it is ? "

" Why, little miss, you've made yourself look very fanny," said uncle Pullet, and perhaps he never in his life made an observation which was felt to be so lacerating.

" Eie, for shame ! " said aunt Glegg, in her loud- est, 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."

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" 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 '11 break her mother's heart," said Mrs Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.

Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of re- proach 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, "0 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, sooth- ingly, putting his arm round her, " never mind ; you was i' the right to cut it off if it plagued you ; give over crying : father '11 take your part."

Delicious words of tenderness ! Maggie never for- got any of these moments when her father " took her part ; " she kept them in her heart, and thought

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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 niver 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 insensi- bility begins. She took no notice of her sister's re- mark, but threw back her cap-strings 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 per- mission : now the dinner was despatched, and every one's mind disengaged, it was the right moment to communicate Mr Tulliver's intention concerning

o

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

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understand nothing, however they might stretch their necks and listen ; but on this occasion Mrs TuUiver 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 sigh- ing 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 hus- band 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, " IVe no objections to tell anybody what I mean to do with him. I've settled," he added, looking to- wards 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 under- stand— as '11 put him up to most things."

"There was a rustling demonstration of surprise in the company, such as you may have observed in a

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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 Tul- liver had said that he was going to send Tom to the Lord Chancellor : for uncle Pullet belonged to that extinct class of British yeomen who, dressed in good broadcloth, paid high rates and taxes, went to church, and ate a particularly good dinner on Sun- day, 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 difiicult 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 favouring circumstances. And uncle Pullet had a great natural faculty for ignorance.

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He was the first to give utterance to liis astonisli- ment.

"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 school- masters, 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 sent 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 main- tain a neutral position.

" Wliat ! do you think the parson '11 teach him to know a good sample o' wheat when he sees it, neigh- bour Tulliver?" said Mr Glegg, who was fond of his

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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, IVe got a plan i' my head about Tom," said Mr Tulliver, pausing after that state- ment and lifting up his glass.

"Well, if I may be allowed to speak, and it's seldom as I am," said Mrs Olegg, 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, IVe 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 eddi cation 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."

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"Is he at the head of a grammar school, then, this clergyman — such as that at Market Bewley V said Mr Deane.

"No— nothing o' 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 difi&cult 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 invest- ment; Tom's eddication 'ull be so much capital to him."

" Ay, there's something in that," said Mr Glegg. " Well, well, neighbour 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 learn-

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ing had better keep our money, eh, neighbour 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 un- becoming 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 afiaii's without troubling other folks."

"Bless me," said Mr Deane, judiciously intro- ducing 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

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clieerfuUy 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 f 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, neighbour TuUiver; 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 im- plied 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 Tulli- ver doesn't want to know your opinion nor mine neither. There's folks in the world as know better than everybody else."

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

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your own tale," said Mr Tulliver, beginning to boil up again.

" 0, 1 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 TulHver. " 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, Idn 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 oppor- tunity of diverting his bark towards the man who carries no stick. " It's poor work, talking o' almonds and raisins."

" Lors, sister Glegg, don't be so quarrelsome,"

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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 reason- able," 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 for ever. 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 Tul- liver, 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 11 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."

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" 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 domi- neer over me again in a huny.''

" 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 Deaue. " You'll make it up another day."

" Then, sisters, shall we go and look at the chil- dren?" said Mrs Tulliver, drjring her eyes.

No proposition could have been more seasonable.

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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 ap- plication to business allowed the pleasure very rarely. Mr Deane, he considered, was the " know- ingest" man of his acquaintance, and he had besides a ready causticity of tongue that made an agree- able supplement to Mr TuUiver's own tendency that way, which had remained in rather an inar- ticulate condition. And now the women were gone, they could carry on their serious talk without fri- volous 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 Tul- liver had heard from a person of particular know- ledge 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

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transactions in Dantzic beer, inclining him to form rather a low view of Prussian pluck generally. Eather beaten on this ground, Mr Tulliver pro- ceeded 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 Eadicals, 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 under- stand 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.

CHAPTER VIII.

MR TTJLLIVER SHOWS HIS WEAKER SIDE.

"Suppose sister Glegg should call her money in — it 'ud be very awkward for you to have to raise five hundred pounds now," said Mrs Tulliver to her husband that evening, as she took a plaintive review of the day.

Mrs Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal gold-fish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the en- circling glass. Mrs Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and, after running her head ao-ainst the same resisting medium for thirteen years, would go at it again to-day with undulled alacrity.

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This observation of hers tended directly to con- vince Mr TuUiver that it would not be at all awk- ward for him to raise five hundred pounds; and when Mrs Tulliver became rather pressing to know how he would raise it without mortgaging the mill and the house which he had said he never would mortgage, since nowadays people were none so ready to lend money without security, Mr Tulliver, getting warm, declared that Mrs Glegg might do as she liked about calling in her money — he should pay it in, whether or not. He was not going to be be- holding to his wife's sisters. When a man had married into a family where there was a whole litter of women, he might have plenty to put up with if he choose. But Mr Tulliver did not choose.

Mrs Tulliver cried a little in a trickling quiet way as she put on her nightcap ; but presently sank into a comfortable sleep, lulled by the thought that she would talk everything over with her sister Pullet to-morrow, when she was to take the children to Garum Firs to tea. Not that she looked forward to any distinct issue from that talk ; but it seemed im- possible that past events should be so obstinate as to remain unmodified when they were complained against.

Her husband lay awake rather longer, for he too

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was thinking of a visit lie would pay on tlie morrow, and his ideas on the subject were not of so vague and soothing a kind as those of his amiable partner. Mr Tulliver, when under the influence of a strong feeling, had a promptitude in action that may seem inconsistent with that painful sense of the compli- cated puzzling nature of human affairs under which his more dispassionate deliberations were conducted ; but it is really not improbable that there was a ' direct relation between these apparently contradic- tory phenomena, since I have observed that for get- ting a strong impression that a skein is tangled, there is nothing like snatching hastily at a single thread. It was owing to this promptitude that Mr TuUiver was on horseback soon after dinner the next day (he was not dyspeptic) on his way to Basset to see his sister Moss and her husband. For having made up his mind irrevocably that he would pay Mrs Glegg her loan of five hundred pounds, it naturally occurred to him that he had a promissory note for three hundred pounds lent to his brother-in-law Moss, and if said brother-in-law could manage to pay in the money within a given time, it would go far to lessen the fallacious air of inconvenience which Mr Tulliver's spirited step might have worn in the eyes of weak people who require to know precisely how a thing is

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to be done before tliey are strongly confident that it will be easy.

For Mr Tulliver was in a position neither new nor striking, but, like other everyday things, sure to have a cumulative efiect that will be felt in the long run : he was held to be a much more substan- tial man than he really was. And as we are all apt to believe what the world believes about us, it was his habit to think of failure and ruin with the same sort of remote pity with which a spare long-necked man hears that his plethoric short-necked neighbour is stricken with apoplexy. He had been always used to hear pleasant jokes about his advantages as a man who worked his own mill, and owned a pretty bit of land ; and these jokes naturally kept up his sense that he was a man of considerable sub- stance. They gave a pleasant flavour to his glass on a market-day, and if it had not been for the re- currence of half-yearly payments, Mr Tulliver would really have forgotten that there was a mortgage of two thousand pounds on his very desirable free- hold. That was not altogether his own fault, since one of the thousand pounds was his sister's fortune, which he had had to pay on her marriage ; and a man who has neighbours that will go to law with him, is not likely to pay off his mortgages, especially if he

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enjoys the good opinion of acquaintances who want to borrow a hundred pounds on security too lofty to be represented by parchment. Our friend Mr Tulliver had a good-natured fibre in him, and did not like to give harsh refusals even to a sister, who had not only come into the world in that superfluous way characteristic of sisters, creating a necessity for mortgages, but had quite thrown her- self away in marriage, and had crowned her mis- takes by having an eighth baby. On this point Mr Tulliver was conscious of being a little weak ; but he apologised to himself by saying that poor Gritty had been a good-looking wench before she married Moss — he would sometimes say this even with a slight tremulousness in his voice. But this morning he was in a mood more becoming a man of business, and in the course of his ride along the Basset lanes, with their deep ruts, — lying so far away from a market-town that the labour of drawing produce and manure was enough to take away the best part of the profits on such poor land as that parish was made of, — he got up a due amount of irritation against Moss as a man without capital, who, if murrain and blight were abroad, was sure to have his share of them, and who, the more you tried to help him out of the mud, would sink the further in.

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It would do him good rather than harm, now, if he were obliged to raise this three hundred pounds : it would make him look about him better, and not act so foolishly about his wool this year as he did the last : in fact, Mr TuUiver had been too easy with his brother-in-law, and because he had let the in- terest run on for two years, Moss was likely enough to think that he should never be troubled about the principal. But Mr Tulliver was determined not to encourage such shuffling people any longer ; and a ride along the Basset lanes was not likely to ener- vate a man's resolution by softening his temper. The deep-trodden hoof-marks, made in the muddiest days of winter, gave him a shake now and then which suggested a rash but stimulating snarl at the father of lawyers, who, whether by means of his hoof or otherwise, had doubtless something to do with this state of the roads ; and the abundance of foul land and neglected fences that met his eye, though they made no part of his brother LToss's farm, strongly contributed to his dissatisfaction with that unlucky agriculturist. If this wasn't Moss's fallow, it might have been : Basset was all alike ; it was a beggarly parish in Mr Tulliver's opinion, and his opinion was certainly not ground- less. Basset had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor

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non-resident landlord, a poor non-resident vicar, and rather less than half a curate, also poor. If any one strongly impressed with the power of the human mind to triumph over circumstances, will contend that the parishioners of Basset might never- theless have been a very superior class of people, I have nothing to urge against that abstract pro- position; I only know that, in point of fact, the Basset mind was in strict keeping with its circum- stances. The muddy lanes, green or clayey, that seemed to the unaccustomed eye to lead nowhere but into each other, did really lead, with patience, to a distant high-road ; but there were many feet in Basset which they led more frequently to a centre of dissipation, spoken of formally as the " Markis o* Granby," but among intimates as " Dickison's." A large low room with a sanded floor, a cold scent of tobacco, modified by undetected beer-dregs, Mr Dickison leaning against the doorpost with a melan- choly pimpled face, looking as irrelevant to the day- light as a last night's guttered candle — aU this may not seem a very seductive form of temptation ; but the majority of men in Basset found it fatally allur- ing when encountered on their road towards four o'clock on a wintry afternoon ; and if any wife in Basset wished to indicate that her husband was not

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a pleasure-seeking man, she could hardly do it more emphatically than by saying that he didn't spend a shilling at Dickison's from one Whitsuntide to an- other. Mrs Moss had said so of her husband more than once, when her brother was in a mood to find fault with him, as he certainly was to-day. And nothing could be less pacifying to Mr TuUiver than the behaviour of the farmyard gate, which he no sooner attempted to push open with his riding-stick, than it acted as gates without the upper hinge are known to do, to the peril of shins, whether equine or human. He was about to get down and lead his horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farm- yard, shadowed drearily by the large half-timbered buildings, up to the long line of tumble -down dwelling-house standing on a raised causeway, but the timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he had determined on — ^namely, not to get down from his horse during this visit. If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon. Mrs Moss heard the sound of the horse's feet, and, when her brother rode up, was already out- side the kitchen door, with a half- weary smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her arms. Mrs Moss's

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face bore a faded resemblance to her brother's ; baby's little fat hand, pressed against her cheek, seemed to show more strikingly that the cheek was faded.

" Brother, I'm glad to see you," she said, in an affectionate tone. " I didn't look for you to-day. How do you do ?'*

" Oh, .... pretty well, Mrs Moss .... pretty well/' answered the brother, with cool deliberation, as if it were rather too forward of her to ask that question. She knew at once that her brother was not in a good humour : he never called her Mrs Moss except when he was angry, and when they were in company. But she thought it was in the order of nature that people who were poorly off should be snubbed. Mrs Moss did not take her stand on the equality of the human race : she was a patient, prolific, loving-hearted woman.

"Your husband isn't in the house, I suppose?" added Mr Tulliver, after a gxave pause, during which four children had run out, like chickens whose mother has been suddenly in eclipse behind the hencoop.

"No," said Mrs Moss, "but he's only in the potato-field yonders. Georgy, run to the Far Close in a minute, and tell father your uncle's come. You'll get down, brother, won't you, and take somethmg?"

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" No, no ; I can't get down. I must be going home again directly/' said Mr Tulliver, looking at the distance.

"And how's Mrs Tulliver and the children?" said Mrs Moss, humbly, not daring to press her invitation.

"Oh ... . pretty well Tom's going to a new school at Midsummer — a deal of expense to me. It's bad work for me, lying out o' my money."

" I wish you'd be so good as let the children come and see their cousins some day. My little uns want to see their cousin Maggie, so as never was. And me her god-mother, and so fond of her — there's nobody 'ud make a bigger fuss with her, according to what they've got. And I know she likes to come, for she's a loving child, and how quick and clever she is, to be sure ! "

If Mrs Moss had been one of the most astute women in the world, instead of being one of the simplest, she could have thought of nothing more likely to propitiate her brother than this praise of Maggie. He seldom found any one volunteering praise of " the little wench : " it was usually left entirely to himself to insist on her merits. But Maggie always appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Moss's : it was her Alsatia, where she

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was out of the reacli of law — if she upset anything, dirtied her shoes, or tore her frock, these things were matters of course at her aunt Moss's. In spite of himself, Mr Tulliver's eyes got milder, and he did not look away from his sister, as he said,

" Ay : she's fonder o' you than o' the other aunts, I think. She takes after our family : not a bit of her mother's in her."

" Moss says she's just like what I used to be,'' said Mrs Moss, " though I was never so quick and fond o' the books. But I think my Lizzy's like her — she's sharp. Come here, Lizzy, my dear, and let your uncle see you : he hardly knows you ; you grow so fast."

Lizzy, a black-eyed child of seven, looked very shy when her mother drew her forward, for the small Mosses were much in awe of their uncle from Dorl- cote Mill. She was inferior enough to Maggie in fire and strength of expression, to make the resem- blance between the two entirely flattering to Mr Tulliver's fatherly love.

" Ay, they're a bit alike," he said, looking kindly at the little figure in the soiled pinafore. " They both take after our mother. You've got enough o' gells, Gritty," he added, in a tone half compassionate, half reproachful.

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" Four of *em, bless 'em" said Mrs Moss, with a sigh, stroking Lizzy's hair on each side of her fore- head ; " as many as there's boys. They've got a brother a-piece."

*' Ah, but they must turn out and fend for them- selves/' said Mr TuUiver, feeling that his severity was relaxing, and trying to brace it by throwing out a wholesome hint. "They mustn't look to hanging on their brothers."

" No : but I hope their brothers 'ull love the poor things, and remember they came o' one father and mother : the lads 'ull never be the poorer for that," said Mrs Moss, flashing out with hurried timidity, like a half-smothered fire.

Mr TuUiver gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked it, and said, angrily, " Stand still with you !" much to the astonishment of that in- nocent animal.

" And the more there is of 'em, the more they must love one another," Mrs Moss went on, looking at her children with a didactic purpose. But she turned towards her brother again to say, '* Not but what I hope your boy 'ull allays be good to his sister, though there's but two of 'em, like you and me, brother."

That arrow went straight to Mr TuUiver's heart.

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He had not a rapid imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very near to him, and he was not long in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side with Tom's relation to Maggie. Would the little wench ever be poorly off, and Tom rather hard upon her ?

" Ay, ay, Gritty,'' said the miller, with a new softness in his tone, " but I've allays done what I could for you," he added, as if vindicating himself from a reproach.

" I'm not denying that, brother, and I'm noways ungrateful," said poor Mrs Moss, too fagged by toil and children to have strength left for any pride. " But here's the father. What a while you've been,

Moss r

"While, do you call it?" said Mr Moss, feeHng out of breath and injured. " I've been running all the way. Won't you light, Mr TuUiver V

" Well, I'll just get down, and have a bit o' talk with you in the garden," said Mr Tulliver, feeling that he should be more likely to show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present.

He got down, and passed with Mr Moss into the garden, towards an old yew-tree arbour, while his sister stood tapping her baby on the back, and look- ing wistfully after them.

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Tteir entrance into the yew-tree arbour sur- prised several fowls that were recreating them- selves by scratching deep holes in the dusty ground, and at once took flight with much pother and cack- ling. Mr Tulliver sat down on the bench, and tap- ping the ground curiously here and there with his stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened the conversation by observing, with something like a snarl in his tone —

"Why, you've got wheat again in that Comer Close, I see ; and never a bit o' dressing on it. Youll do no good with it this year."

Mr Moss, who, when he married Miss Tulliver, had been regarded as the buck of Basset, now wore a beard nearly a week old, and had the depressed, unexpectant air of a machine-horse. He answered in a patient-grnmbling tone, "Why, poor farmers like me must do as they can : they must leave it to them as have got money to play vdth, to put half as much into the ground as they mean to get out of it."

" I don't know who should have money to play with, if it isn't them as can borrow money without paying interest," said Mr Tulliver, who wished to get into a slight quarrel ; it was the most natural and easy introduction to calling in money.

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" I know I'm beMnd with the interest," said Mr Moss, " but I was so unlucky wi' the wool last year ; and what with the Missis being laid up so, things have gone awk'arder nor usual."

"Ay," snarled Mr Tulliver, "there's folks as things 'ull allays go awk'ard with : empty sacks 'ull never stand upright."

"Well, I don't know what fault youVe got to find wi' me, Mr TulHver," said Mr Moss, deprecat- ingly ; " I know there isn't a day-labourer works harder."

"What's the use o' that," said Mr Tulliver, sharply, " when a man marries, an's got no capital to work his farm but his wife's bit o' fortin ? I was against it from the first ; but you'd neither of you listen to me. And I can't lie out o' my money any longer, for I've got to pay five hundred o' Mrs Glegg's, and there 'ull be Tom an expense to me, as I should find myself short, even saying I'd got back all as is my own. You must look about and see how you can pay me the three hundred pound."

" Well, if that's what you mean," said Mr Moss, looking blankly before him, " we'd better be sold up, and ha' done with it ; I must part wi' every head o' stock I'n got, to pay you and the landlord too."

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Poor relations are undeniably irritating — their existence is so entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost always very faulty people. Mr Tulliver had succeeded in getting quite as much irritated with Mr Moss as he had desired, and he was able to say angrily, rising from his seat —

" Well, you must do as you can. / can't find money for everybody else as well as myself. I must look to my own business, and my own family. I can't lie out o' my money any longer. You must raise it as quick as you can.'*

Mr Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbour as he uttered the last sentence, and, without looking round at Mr Moss, went on to the kitchen door, where the eldest boy was holding his horse, and his sister was waiting in a state of wondering alarm, which was not without its alleviations, for baby was making pleasant gurgling sounds, and performing a great deal of finger practice on the faded face. Mrs Moss had eight children, but could never over- come her regret that the twins had not lived. Mr Moss thought their removal was not without its consolations. " Won't you come in, brother ? " she said, looking anxiously at her husband, who was walking slowly up, while Mr Tulliver bad his foot already in the stirrup.

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" No, no ; good-by/' said he, turning his horse's head, and riding away.

No man could feel more resolute till he got out- side the yard-gate, and a little way along the deep- rutted lane ; but before he reached the next turning, which would take him out of sight of the dilapidated farm-buildings, he appeared to be smitten by some sudden thought. He checked his horse, and made it stand still in the same spot for two or three minutes, during which he turned his head from side to side in a melancholy way, as if he were look- ing at some painful object on more sides than one. Evidently, after his fit of promptitude, Mr Tulliver was relapsing into the sense that this is a puzzling world. He turned his horse, and rode slowly back, giving vent to the climax of feeling which had de- termined this movement by saying aloud, as he struck his horse, " Poor little wench ! she'll have nobody but Tom, belike, when I'm gone."

Mr Tulliver's return into the yard was descried by several young Mosses, who immediately ran in with the exciting news to their mother, so that Mrs Moss was again on the door-step when her brother rode up. She had been crying, but was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and made

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no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at her, but merely said —

" The father's gone to the field again, if you want him, brother."

" No, Gritty, no," said Mr Tulliver, in a gentle tone. " Don't you fret — that's all — I'll make a shift without the money a bit — only you must be as cliver and contriving as you can."

Mrs Moss's tears came again at this unexpected kindness, and she could say nothing.

" Come, come ! — the little wench shall come and see you. I'll bring her and Tom some day before he goes to school. You mustn't fret. . . . I'll allays be a good brother to you."

" Thank you for that word, brother,** said Mrs Moss, drying her tears ; then turning to Lizzy, she said, "Eun now, and fetch the coloured egg for cousin Maggie." Lizzy ran in, and quickly reappeared with a small paper parcel.

"It's boiled hard, brother, and coloured with thrums — very pretty : it was done o' purpose for Maggie. Will you please to carry it in your pocket?"

" Ay, ay," said Mr Tulliver, putting it carefully in his side-pocket. " Good-by."

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And so the respectable miller returned along the Basset lanes rather more puzzled than before as to ways and means, but still with the sense of a danger escaped. It had come across his mind that if he were hard upon his sister, it might somehow tend to make Tom hard upon Maggie at some distant day, when her father was no longer there to take her part ; for simple people, like our friend Mr Tul- liver, are apt to clothe unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this was his confused way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for " the little wench" had given him a new sensibility towards his sister.

CHAPTER IX.

TO GAEUM FIES.

While the possible troubles of Maggie's future were occupying her father's mind, she herself was tast- ing only the bitterness of the present. Childhood has no forebodings ; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

The fact was, the day had begun ill with Maggie. The pleasure of having Lucy to look at, and the prospect of the afternoon visit to Garum Firs, where she would hear uncle Pullet's musical-box, had been marred as early as eleven o'clock by the advent of the hair-dresser from St Ogg's, who had spoken in the severest terms of the condition in which he had found her hair, holding up one jagged lock after another and saying, " See here ! tut— tut — tut !" in a tone of mingled disgust and pity, which to Maggie's imagination was equivalent to the strongest expression of public opinion. Mr Rappit, the hair-

156 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

dresser, with his well-anointed coronal locks tend- ing wavily upward, like the simulated pyramid of flame on a monumental urn, seemed to her at that moment the most formidable of her contem- poraries, into whose street at St Ogg's she would carefully refrain from entering through the rest of her life.

Moreover, the preparation for a visit being always a serious affair in the Dodson family, Martha was enjoined to have Mrs TuUiver's room ready an hour earlier than usual, that the laying-out of the best clothes might not be deferred till the last moment, as was sometimes the case in families of lax views, where the ribbon-strings were never rolled up, where there was little or no wrapping in silver paper, and where the sense that the Sunday clothes could be got at quite easily produced no shock to the mind. Already, at twelve o'clock, Mrs Tulli- ver had on her visiting costume, with a protective apparatus of brown hoUand, as if she had been a piece of satin furniture in danger of flies ; Maggie was frowning and twisting her shoulders, that she might if possible shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers, while her mother was remonstrating, " Don't, Maggie, my dear — don't look so