The Mill on the Floss

nter 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 curled fronts: Mrs Glegg had doubtless the glossiest and
crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various
degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the week-day world from
under a crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most dreamlike
and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular.
Occasionally, indeed, Mrs Glegg wore one of her third-best fronts on a
week-day visit, but not at a sister’s house; especially not at Mrs
Tulliver’s, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sister’s feelings
greatly by wearing her own hair, though, as Mrs Glegg observed to Mrs
Deane, a mother of a family, like Bessy, with a husband always going to
law, might have been expected to know better. But Bessy was always
weak!

So if Mrs Glegg’s front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she
had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting
allusion to Mrs Tulliver’s bunches of blond curls, separated from each
other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs
Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg’s unkindness on
the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness of looking
the handsomer for them naturally administered support. Mrs Glegg chose
to wear her bonnet in the house to-day,—untied and 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
meeting across her well-formed chest, while her long neck was protected
by a chevaux-de-frise of miscellaneous frilling. One would need to be
learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the rear of
them Mrs Glegg’s slate-coloured silk gown must have been; but from
certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor
about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it
belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come recently
into wear.

Mrs Glegg held her large gold watch in her hand with the many-doubled
chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs Tulliver, who had just
returned from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might be by
other people’s clocks and watches, it was gone half-past twelve by
hers.

“I don’t know what ails sister Pullet,” she continued. “It used to be
the way in our family for one to be as early as another,—I’m sure it
was so in my poor father’s time,—and not for one sister to sit half an
hour before the others came. But if the ways o’ the family are altered,
it sha’n’t be my fault; I’ll never be the one to come into a house
when all the rest are going away. I wonder at sister Deane,—she used
to be more like me. But if you’ll take my advice, Bessy, you’ll put the
dinner forrard a bit, sooner than put it back, because folks are late
as ought to ha’ known better.”

“Oh dear, there’s no fear but what they’ll be all here in time,
sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, in her mild-peevish tone. “The dinner won’t
be ready till half-past one. But if it’s long for you to wait, let me
fetch you a cheesecake and a glass o’ wine.”

“Well, Bessy!” said Mrs Glegg, with a bitter smile and a scarcely
perceptible toss of her head, “I should ha’ thought you’d known your
own sister better. I never did eat between meals, and I’m not going
to begin. Not but what I hate that nonsense of having your dinner at
half-past one, when you might have it at one. You was never brought up
in that way, Bessy.”

“Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr Tulliver doesn’t like his dinner before
two o’clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o’ you.”

“Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands,—they’re for putting
everything off; they’ll put the dinner off till after tea, if they’ve
got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work; but it’s a pity
for you, Bessy, as you haven’t got more strength o’ mind. It’ll be well
if your children don’t suffer for it. And I hope you’ve not gone and
got a great dinner for us,—going to expense for your sisters, as ’ud
sooner eat a crust o’ dry bread nor help to ruin you with extravagance.
I wonder you don’t take pattern by your sister Deane; she’s far more
sensible. And here you’ve got two children to provide for, and your
husband’s spent your fortin i’ going to law, and’s likely to spend his
own too. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of for the kitchen,”
Mrs Glegg added, in a tone of emphatic protest, “and a plain pudding,
with a spoonful o’ sugar, and no spice, ’ud be far more becoming.”

With sister Glegg in this humour, there was a cheerful prospect for the
day. Mrs Tulliver never went the length of quarrelling with her, any
more than a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner
can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones. But this point of
the dinner was a tender one, and not at all new, so that Mrs Tulliver
could make the same answer she had often made before.

“Mr Tulliver says he always will have a good dinner for his friends
while he can pay for it,” she said; “and he’s a right to do as he likes
in his own house, sister.”

“Well, Bessy, I can’t leave your children enough out o’ my savings to
keep ’em from ruin. And you mustn’t look to having any o’ Mr Glegg’s
money, for it’s well if I don’t go first,—he comes of a long-lived
family; and if he was to die and leave me well for my life, he’d tie
all the money up to go back to his own kin.”

The sound of wheels while Mrs Glegg was speaking was an interruption
highly welcome to Mrs Tulliver, who hastened out to receive sister
Pullet; it must be sister Pullet, because the sound was that of a
four-wheel.

Mrs Glegg tossed her head and looked rather sour about the mouth at the
thought of the “four-wheel.” She had a strong opinion on that subject.

Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before Mrs
Tulliver’s door, and it was apparently requisite that she should shed a
few more before getting out; for though her husband and Mrs Tulliver
stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head sadly, as
she looked through her tears at the vague distance.

“Why, whativer is the matter, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver. She was not
an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the large
toilet-glass in sister Pullet’s best bedroom was possibly broken for
the second time.

There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs Pullet
slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance
at Mr Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from
injury. Mr Pullet was a small man, with a high nose, small twinkling
eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white
cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher
principle than that of mere personal ease. He bore about the same
relation to his tall, good-looking wife, with her balloon sleeves,
abundant mantle, and a large befeathered and beribboned bonnet, as a
small fishing-smack bears to a brig with all its sails spread.

It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity
introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilisation, the sight
of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow of a
Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with several
bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and delicate ribbon
strings, what a long series of gradations! In the enlightened child of
civilisation the abandonment characteristic of grief is checked and
varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an interesting problem
to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and eyes half blinded by
the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too devious step through a
door-place, she might crush her buckram sleeves too, and the deep
consciousness of this possibility produces a composition of forces by
which she takes a line that just clears the door-post. Perceiving that
the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them
languidly backward, a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest
gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once
more have a charm. As the tears subside a little, and with her head
leaning backward at the angle that will not injure her bonnet, she
endures that terrible moment when grief, which has made all things else
a weariness, has itself become weary; she looks down pensively at her
bracelets, and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studied fortuity
which would be gratifying to her mind if it were once more in a calm
and healthy state.

Mrs Pullet brushed each door-post with great nicety, about the latitude
of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous to an
instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across the
shoulders), and having done that sent the muscles of her face in quest
of fresh tears as she advanced into the 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 carefully behind, before she
answered,—

“She’s gone,” unconsciously using an impressive figure of rhetoric.

“It isn’t the glass this time, then,” thought Mrs Tulliver.

“Died the day before yesterday,” continued Mrs Pullet; “an’ her legs
was as thick as my body,” she added, with deep sadness, after a pause.
“They’d tapped her no end o’ times, and the water—they say you might
ha’ swum in it, if you’d liked.”

“Well, Sophy, it’s a mercy she’s gone, then, whoever she may be,” said
Mrs Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear
and decided; “but I can’t think who you’re talking of, for my part.”

“But I know,” said Mrs Pullet, sighing and shaking her head; “and
there isn’t another such a dropsy in the parish. I know as it’s old
Mrs Sutton o’ the Twentylands.”

“Well, she’s no kin o’ yours, nor much acquaintance as I’ve ever heared
of,” said Mrs Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when
anything happened to her own “kin,” but not on other occasions.

“She’s so much acquaintance as I’ve seen her legs when they was like
bladders. And an old lady as had doubled her money over and over again,
and kept it all in her own management to the last, and had her pocket
with her keys in under her pillow constant. There isn’t many old
parish’ners like her, I doubt.”

“And they say she’d took as much physic as ’ud fill a wagon,” observed
Mr Pullet.

“Ah!” sighed Mrs Pullet, “she’d another complaint ever so many years
before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn’t make out what it
was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she
said, ‘Mrs Pullet, if ever you have the dropsy, you’ll think o’ me.’
She did say so,” added Mrs Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again;
“those were her very words. And she’s to be buried o’ Saturday, and
Pullet’s bid to the funeral.”

“Sophy,” said Mrs Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of
rational remonstrance,—“Sophy, I wonder at you, fretting and injuring
your health about people as don’t belong to you. Your poor father never
did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o’ the family as I ever
heard of. You couldn’t fret no more than this, if we’d heared as our
cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will.”

Mrs Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather
flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. It was
not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their neighbours
who had left them nothing; but Mrs Pullet had married a gentleman
farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and everything
else to the highest pitch of respectability.

“Mrs Sutton didn’t die without making her will, though,” said Mr
Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to sanction
his wife’s tears; “ours is a rich parish, but they say there’s nobody
else to leave as many thousands behind ’em as Mrs Sutton. And she’s
left no leggicies to speak on,—left it all in a lump to her husband’s
nevvy.”

“There wasn’t much good i’ being so rich, then,” said Mrs Glegg, “if
she’d got none but husband’s kin to leave it to. It’s poor work when
that’s all you’ve got to pinch yourself for. Not as I’m one o’ those as
’ud like to die without leaving more money out at interest than other
folks had reckoned; but it’s a poor tale when it must go out o’ your
own family.”

“I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs Pullet, who had recovered sufficiently to
take off her veil and fold it carefully, “it’s a nice sort o’ man as
Mrs Sutton has left her money to, for he’s troubled with the asthmy,
and goes to bed every night at eight o’clock. He told me about it
himself—as free as could be—one Sunday when he came to our church. He
wears a hareskin on his chest, and has a trembling in his talk,—quite a
gentleman sort o’ man. I told him there wasn’t many months in the year
as I wasn’t under the doctor’s hands. And he said, ‘Mrs Pullet, I can
feel for you.’ That was what he said,—the very words. Ah!” sighed Mrs
Pullet, shaking her head at the idea that there were but few who could
enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and white mixture,
strong stuff in small bottles, and weak stuff in large bottles, damp
boluses at a shilling, and draughts at eighteenpence. “Sister, I may as
well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the cap-box was put
out?” she added, turning to her husband.

Mr Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and
hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.

“They’ll bring it upstairs, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, wishing to go
at once, lest Mrs Glegg should begin to explain her feelings about
Sophy’s being the first Dodson who ever ruined her constitution with
doctor’s stuff.

Mrs Tulliver was fond of going upstairs with her sister Pullet, and
looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and
discussing millinery in general. This was part of Bessy’s weakness that
stirred Mrs Glegg’s sisterly compassion: Bessy went far too well
dressed, considering; and she was too proud to dress her child in the
good clothing her sister Glegg gave her from the primeval strata of her
wardrobe; it was a sin and a shame to buy anything to dress that child,
if it wasn’t a pair of shoes. In this particular, however, Mrs Glegg
did her sister Bessy some injustice, for Mrs Tulliver had really made
great efforts to induce Maggie to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk
frock made out of her aunt Glegg’s, but the results had been such that
Mrs Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom; for
Maggie, declaring that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had taken an
opportunity of basting it together with the roast beef the first Sunday
she wore it, and finding this scheme answer, she had subsequently
pumped on the bonnet with its green ribbons, so as to give it a general
resemblance to a sage cheese garnished with withered lettuces. I must
urge in excuse for Maggie, that Tom had laughed at her in the bonnet,
and said she looked like an old Judy. Aunt Pullet, too, made presents
of clothes, but these were always pretty enough to please Maggie as
well as her mother. Of all her sisters, Mrs Tulliver certainly
preferred her sister Pullet, not without a return of preference; but
Mrs Pullet was sorry Bessy had those naughty, awkward children; she
would do the best she could by them, but it was a pity they weren’t as
good and as pretty as sister Deane’s child. Maggie and Tom, on their
part, thought their aunt Pullet tolerable, chiefly because she was not
their aunt Glegg. Tom always declined to go more than once during his
holidays to see either of them. Both his uncles tipped him that once,
of course; but at his aunt Pullet’s there were a great many toads to
pelt in the cellar-area, so that he preferred the visit to her. Maggie
shuddered at the toads, and dreamed of them horribly, but she liked her
uncle Pullet’s musical snuff-box. Still, it was agreed by the sisters,
in Mrs Tulliver’s absence, that the Tulliver blood did not mix well
with the Dodson blood; that, in fact, poor Bessy’s children were
Tullivers, and that Tom, notwithstanding he had the Dodson complexion,
was likely to be as “contrairy” as his father. As for Maggie, she was
the picture of her aunt Moss, Mr Tulliver’s sister,—a large-boned
woman, who had married as poorly as could be; had no china, and had a
husband who had much ado to pay his rent. But when Mrs Pullet was alone
with Mrs Tulliver upstairs, the remarks were naturally to the
disadvantage of Mrs Glegg, and they agreed, in confidence, that there
was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane would come out next. But
their tête-à-tête was curtailed by the appearance of Mrs Deane with
little Lucy; and Mrs Tulliver had to look on with a silent pang while
Lucy’s blond curls were adjusted. It was quite unaccountable that Mrs
Deane, the thinnest and sallowest of all the Miss Dodsons, should have
had this child, who might have been taken for Mrs Tulliver’s any day.
And Maggie always looked twice as dark as usual when she was by the
side of Lucy.

She did to-day, when she and Tom came in from the garden with their
father and their uncle Glegg. Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very
carelessly, and coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl,
rushed at once to Lucy, who was standing by her mother’s knee.
Certainly the contrast between the cousins was conspicuous, and to
superficial eyes was very much to the disadvantage of Maggie though a
connoisseur might have seen “points” in her which had a higher promise
for maturity than Lucy’s natty completeness. It was like the contrast
between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up
the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her was
neat,—her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her little
straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather
darker than her curls, to match hazel eyes, which looked up with shy
pleasure at Maggie, taller by the head, though scarcely a year older.
Maggie always looked at Lucy with delight.

She was fond of fancying a world where the people never got any larger
than children of their own age, and she made the queen of it just like
Lucy, with a little crown on her head, and a little sceptre in her
hand—only the queen was Maggie herself in Lucy’s form.

“Oh, Lucy,” she burst out, after kissing her, “you’ll stay with Tom and
me, won’t you? Oh, kiss her, Tom.”

Tom, too, had come up to Lucy, but he was not going to kiss her—no; he
came up to her with Maggie, because it seemed easier, on the whole,
than saying, “How do you do?” to all those aunts and uncles. He stood
looking at nothing in particular, with the blushing, awkward air and
semi-smile which are common to shy boys when in company,—very much as
if they had come into the world by mistake, and found it in a degree of
undress that was quite embarrassing.

“Heyday!” said aunt Glegg, with loud emphasis. “Do little boys and
gells come into a room without taking notice of their uncles and aunts?
That wasn’t the way when I was a little gell.”

“Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears,” said Mrs Tulliver,
looking anxious and melancholy. She wanted to whisper to Maggie a
command to go and have her hair brushed.

“Well, and how do you do? And I hope you’re good children, are you?”
said Aunt Glegg, in the same loud, emphatic way, as she took their
hands, hurting them with her large rings, and kissing their cheeks much
against their desire. “Look up, Tom, look up. Boys as go to
boarding-schools should hold their heads up. Look at me now.” Tom
declined that pleasure apparently, for he tried to draw his hand away.
“Put your hair behind your ears, Maggie, and keep your frock on your
shoulder.”

Aunt Glegg always spoke to them in this loud, emphatic way, as if she
considered them deaf, or perhaps rather idiotic; it was a means, she
thought, of making them feel that they were accountable creatures, and
might be a salutary check on naughty tendencies. Bessy’s children were
so spoiled—they’d need have somebody to make them feel their duty.

“Well, my dears,” said aunt Pullet, in a compassionate voice, “you grow
wonderful fast. I doubt they’ll outgrow their strength,” she added,
looking over their heads, with a melancholy expression, at their
mother. “I think the gell has too much hair. I’d have it thinned and
cut shorter, sister, if I was you; it isn’t good for her health. It’s
that as makes her skin so brown, I shouldn’t wonder. Don’t you think
so, sister Deane?”

“I can’t say, I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs Deane, shutting her lips
close again, and looking at Maggie with a critical eye.

“No, no,” said Mr Tulliver, “the child’s healthy enough; there’s
nothing ails her. There’s red wheat as well as white, for that matter,
and some like the dark grain best. But it ’ud be as well if Bessy ’ud
have the child’s hair cut, so as it ’ud lie smooth.”

A dreadful resolve was gathering in Maggie’s breast, but it was
arrested by the desire to know from her aunt Deane whether she would
leave Lucy behind. Aunt Deane would hardly ever let Lucy come to see
them. After various reasons for refusal, Mrs Deane appealed to Lucy
herself.

“You wouldn’t like to stay behind without mother, should you, Lucy?”

“Yes, please, mother,” said Lucy, timidly, blushing very pink all over
her little neck.

“Well done, Lucy! Let her stay, Mrs Deane, let her stay,” said Mr
Deane, a large but alert-looking man, with a type of physique to be
seen in all ranks of English society,—bald crown, red whiskers, full
forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see noblemen
like Mr Deane, and you may see grocers or day-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 Tulliver, whose box was only silver-mounted,
so that it was naturally a joke between them that Mr Tulliver wanted to
exchange snuff-boxes also. Mr Deane’s box had been given him by the
superior partners in the firm to which he belonged, at the same time
that they gave him a share in the business, in acknowledgment of his
valuable services as manager. No man was thought more highly of in St
Ogg’s than Mr Deane; and some persons were even of opinion that Miss
Susan Dodson, who was once held to have made the worst match of all the
Dodson sisters, might one day ride in a better carriage, and live in a
better house, even than her sister Pullet. There was no knowing where a
man would stop, who had got his foot into a great mill-owning,
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 followed willingly enough.

“Come upstairs with me, Tom,” she whispered, when they were outside the
door. “There’s something I want to do before dinner.”

“There’s no time to play at anything before dinner,” said Tom, whose
imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.

“Oh yes, there is time for this; do come, Tom.”

Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother’s room, and saw her go at
once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.

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

Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight
across the middle of her forehead.

“Oh, my buttons! Maggie, you’ll catch it!” exclaimed Tom; “you’d better
not cut any more off.”

Snip! went the great scissors again while Tom was speaking, and he
couldn’t help feeling it was rather good fun; Maggie would look so
queer.

“Here, Tom, cut it behind for me,” said Maggie, excited by her own
daring, and anxious to finish the deed.

“You’ll catch it, you know,” said Tom, nodding his head in an
admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors.

“Never mind, make haste!” said Maggie, giving a little stamp with her
foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed.

The black locks were so thick, nothing could be more tempting to a lad
who had already tasted the forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony’s
mane. I speak to those who know the satisfaction of making a pair of
scissors meet through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious
grinding snip, and then another and another, and the hinder-locks fell
heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven
manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had
emerged from a wood into the open plain.

“Oh, Maggie,” said Tom, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as he
laughed, “Oh, my buttons! what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself
in the glass; you look like the idiot we throw out nutshells to at
school.”

Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly at
her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it,
and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and
her aunts by this very decided course of action; she didn’t want her
hair to look pretty,—that was out of the question,—she only wanted
people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with
her. But now, when Tom began to laugh at her, and say she was like an
idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the glass, and
still Tom laughed and clapped his hands, and Maggie’s cheeks began to
pale, and her lips to tremble a little.

“Oh, Maggie, you’ll have to go down to dinner directly,” said Tom. “Oh,
my!”

“Don’t laugh at me, Tom,” said Maggie, in a passionate tone, with an
outburst of angry tears, stamping, and giving him a push.

“Now, then, spitfire!” said Tom. “What did you cut it off for, then? I
shall go down: I can smell the dinner going in.”

He hurried downstairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of the
irrevocable which was almost an everyday experience of her small soul.
She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done, that it was very
foolish, and that she should have to hear and think more about her hair
than ever; for Maggie rushed to her deeds with passionate impulse, and
then saw not only their consequences, but what would have happened if
they had not been done, with all the detail and exaggerated
circumstance of an active imagination. Tom never did the same sort of
foolish things as Maggie, having a wonderful instinctive discernment of
what would turn to his advantage or disadvantage; and so it happened,
that though he was much more wilful and inflexible than Maggie, his
mother hardly ever called him naughty. But if Tom did make a mistake of
that sort, he espoused it, and stood by it: he “didn’t mind.” If he
broke the lash of his father’s gigwhip by lashing the gate, he couldn’t
help it,—the whip shouldn’t have got caught in the hinge. If Tom
Tulliver whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that the whipping of
gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that he, Tom Tulliver, was
justifiable in whipping that particular gate, and he wasn’t going to be
sorry. But Maggie, as she stood crying before the glass, felt it
impossible that she should go down to dinner and endure the severe eyes
and severe words of her aunts, while Tom and Lucy, and Martha, who
waited at table, and perhaps her father and her uncles, would laugh at
her; for if Tom had laughed at her, of course every one else would; and
if she had only let her hair alone, she could have sat with Tom and
Lucy, and had the apricot pudding and the custard! What could she do
but sob? She sat as helpless and despairing among her black locks as
Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish
seems to weather-worn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills,
dead loves, and broken friendships; but it was not less bitter to
Maggie—perhaps it was even more bitter—than what we are fond of calling
antithetically the real troubles of mature life. “Ah, my child, you
will have real troubles to fret about by and by,” is the consolation we
have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have
repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of
us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little
socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place;
but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep over
it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago.
Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us
still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the
firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can
look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the
reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience
of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what
happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and
trousers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of
what he felt then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another;
what he felt when his school fellows shut him out of their game because
he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day
in the holidays, when he didn’t know how to amuse himself, and fell
from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from
defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let
him have a tailed coat that “half,” although every other boy of his age
had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early
bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless
conception of life, that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should
not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.

“Miss Maggie, you’re to come down this minute,” said Kezia, entering
the room hurriedly. “Lawks! what have you been a-doing? I never see
such a fright!”

“Don’t, Kezia,” said Maggie, angrily. “Go away!”

“But I tell you you’re to come down, Miss, this minute; your mother
says so,” said Kezia, going up to Maggie and taking her by the hand to
raise her from the floor.

“Get away, Kezia; I don’t want any dinner,” said Maggie, resisting
Kezia’s arm. “I sha’n’t come.”

“Oh, well, I can’t stay. I’ve got to wait at dinner,” said Kezia, going
out again.

“Maggie, you little silly,” said Tom, peeping into the room ten minutes
after, “why don’t you come and have your dinner? There’s lots o’
goodies, and mother says you’re to come. What are you crying for, you
little spooney?”

Oh, it was dreadful! Tom was so hard and unconcerned; if he had been
crying on the floor, Maggie would have cried too. And there was the
dinner, so nice; and she was so hungry. It was very bitter.

But Tom was not altogether hard. He was not inclined to cry, and did
not feel that Maggie’s grief spoiled his prospect of the sweets; but he
went and put his head near her, and said in a lower, comforting tone,—

“Won’t you come, then, Magsie? Shall I bring you a bit o’ pudding when
I’ve had mine, and a custard and things?”

“Ye-e-es,” said Maggie, beginning to feel life a little more tolerable.

“Very well,” said Tom, going away. But he turned again at the door and
said, “But you’d better come, you know. There’s the dessert,—nuts, you
know, and cowslip wine.”

Maggie’s tears had ceased, and she looked reflective as Tom left her.
His good nature had taken off the keenest edge of her suffering, and
nuts with cowslip wine began to assert their legitimate influence.

Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks, and slowly she made
her way downstairs. Then she stood leaning with one shoulder against
the frame of the dining-parlour door, peeping in when it was ajar. She
saw Tom and Lucy with an empty chair between them, and there were the
custards on a side-table; it was too much. She slipped in and went
toward the empty chair. But she had no sooner sat down than she
repented and wished herself back again.

Mrs Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her, and felt such a
“turn” that she dropped the large gravy-spoon into the dish, with the
most serious results to the table-cloth. For Kezia had not betrayed the
reason of Maggie’s refusal to come down, not liking to give her
mistress a shock in the moment of carving, and Mrs Tulliver thought
there was nothing worse in question than a fit of perverseness, which
was inflicting its own punishment by depriving Maggie of half her
dinner.

Mrs Tulliver’s scream made all eyes turn towards the same point as her
own, and Maggie’s cheeks and ears began to burn, while uncle Glegg, a
kind-looking, white-haired old gentleman, said,—

“Heyday! what little gell’s this? Why, I don’t know her. Is it some
little gell you’ve picked up in the road, Kezia?”

“Why, she’s gone and cut her hair herself,” said Mr Tulliver in an
undertone to Mr Deane, laughing with much enjoyment. “Did you ever know
such a little hussy as it is?”

“Why, little miss, you’ve made yourself look very funny,” said Uncle
Pullet, and perhaps he never in his life made an observation which was
felt to be so lacerating.

“Fie, for shame!” said aunt Glegg, in her loudest, severest tone of
reproof. “Little gells as cut their own hair should be whipped and fed
on bread and water,—not come and sit down with their aunts and uncles.”

“Ay, ay,” said uncle Glegg, meaning to give a playful turn to this
denunciation, “she must be sent to jail, I think, and they’ll cut the
rest of her hair off there, and make it all even.”

“She’s more like a gypsy nor ever,” said aunt Pullet, in a pitying
tone; “it’s very bad luck, sister, as the gell should be so brown; the
boy’s fair enough. I doubt it’ll stand in her way i’ life to be so
brown.”

“She’s a naughty child, as’ll break her mother’s heart,” said Mrs
Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.

Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of reproach and derision. Her
first flush came from anger, which gave her a transient power of
defiance, and Tom thought she was braving it out, supported by the
recent appearance of the pudding and custard. Under this impression, he
whispered, “Oh, my! Maggie, I told you you’d catch it.” He meant to be
friendly, but Maggie felt convinced that Tom was rejoicing in her
ignominy. Her feeble power of defiance left her in an instant, her
heart swelled, and getting up from her chair, she ran to her father,
hid her face on his shoulder, and burst out into loud sobbing.

“Come, come, my wench,” said her father, soothingly, putting his arm
round her, “never mind; you was i’ the right to cut it off if it
plagued you; give over crying; father’ll take your part.”

Delicious words of tenderness! Maggie never forgot any of these moments
when her father “took her part”; she kept them in her heart, and
thought of them long years after, when every one else said that her
father had done very ill by his children.

“How your husband does spoil that child, Bessy!” said Mrs Glegg, in a
loud “aside,” to Mrs Tulliver. “It’ll be the ruin of her, if you don’t
take care. My father never brought his children up so, else we should
ha’ been a different sort o’ family to what we are.”

Mrs Tulliver’s domestic sorrows seemed at this moment to have reached
the point at which insensibility begins. She took no notice of her
sister’s remark, but threw back her capstrings and dispensed the
pudding, in mute resignation.

With the dessert there came entire deliverance for Maggie, for the
children were told they might have their nuts and wine in the
summer-house, since the day was so mild; and they scampered out among
the budding bushes of the garden with the alacrity of small animals
getting from under a burning glass.

Mrs Tulliver had her special reason for this permission: now the dinner
was despatched, and every one’s mind disengaged, it was the right
moment to communicate Mr Tulliver’s intention concerning Tom, and it
would be as well for Tom himself to be absent. The children were used
to hear themselves talked of as freely as if they were birds, and could
understand nothing, however they might stretch their necks and listen;
but on this occasion Mrs Tulliver manifested an unusual discretion,
because she had recently had evidence that the going to school to a
clergyman was a sore point with Tom, who looked at it as very much on a
par with going to school to a constable. Mrs Tulliver had a sighing
sense that her husband would do as he liked, whatever sister Glegg
said, or sister Pullet either; but at least they would not be able to
say, if the thing turned out ill, that Bessy had fallen in with her
husband’s folly without letting her own friends know a word about it.

“Mr Tulliver,” she said, interrupting her husband in his talk with Mr
Deane, “it’s time now to tell the children’s aunts and uncles what
you’re thinking of doing with Tom, isn’t it?”

“Very well,” said Mr Tulliver, rather sharply, “I’ve no objections to
tell anybody what I mean to do with him. I’ve settled,” he added,
looking toward Mr Glegg and Mr Deane,—“I’ve settled to send him to a Mr
Stelling, a parson, down at King’s Lorton, there,—an uncommon clever
fellow, I understand, as’ll put him up to most things.”

There was a rustling demonstration of surprise in the company, such as
you may have observed in a country congregation when they hear an
allusion to their week-day affairs from the pulpit. It was equally
astonishing to the aunts and uncles to find a parson introduced into Mr
Tulliver’s family arrangements. As for uncle Pullet, he could hardly
have been more thoroughly obfuscated if Mr Tulliver had said that he
was going to send Tom to the Lord Chancellor; for uncle Pullet belonged
to that extinct class of British yeoman who, dressed in good
broadcloth, paid high rates and taxes, went to church, and ate a
particularly good dinner on Sunday, without dreaming that the British
constitution in Church and State had a traceable origin any more than
the solar system and the fixed stars.

It is melancholy, but true, that Mr Pullet had the most confused idea
of a bishop as a sort of a baronet, who might or might not be a
clergyman; and as the rector of his own parish was a man of high family
and fortune, the idea that a clergyman could be a schoolmaster was too
remote from Mr Pullet’s experience to be readily conceivable. I know it
is difficult for people in these instructed times to believe in uncle
Pullet’s ignorance; but let them reflect on the remarkable results of a
great natural faculty under favouring circumstances. And uncle Pullet
had a great natural faculty for ignorance. He was the first to give
utterance to his astonishment.

“Why, what can you be going to send him to a parson for?” he said, with
an amazed twinkling in his eyes, looking at Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, to
see if they showed any signs of comprehension.

“Why, because the parsons are the best schoolmasters, by what I can
make out,” said poor Mr Tulliver, who, in the maze of this puzzling
world, laid hold of any clue with great readiness and tenacity. “Jacobs
at th’ academy’s no parson, and he’s done very bad by the boy; and I
made up my mind, if I send him to school again, it should be to
somebody different to Jacobs. And this Mr Stelling, by what I can make
out, is the sort o’ man I want. And I mean my boy to go to him at
Midsummer,” he concluded, in a tone of decision, tapping his snuff-box
and taking a pinch.

“You’ll have to pay a swinging half-yearly bill, then, eh, Tulliver?
The clergymen have highish notions, in general,” said Mr Deane, taking
snuff vigorously, as he always did when wishing to maintain a neutral
position.

“What! do you think the parson’ll teach him to know a good sample o’
wheat when he sees it, neighbour Tulliver?” said Mr Glegg, who was fond
of his jest, and having retired from business, felt that it was not
only allowable but becoming in him to take a playful view of things.

“Why, you see, I’ve got a plan i’ my head about Tom,” said Mr Tulliver,
pausing after that statement and lifting up his glass.

“Well, if I may be allowed to speak, and it’s seldom as I am,” said Mrs
Glegg, with a tone of bitter meaning, “I should like to know what good
is to come to the boy by bringin’ him up above his fortin.”

“Why,” said Mr Tulliver, not looking at Mrs Glegg, but at the male part
of his audience, “you see, I’ve made up my mind not to bring Tom up to
my own business. I’ve had my thoughts about it all along, and I made up
my mind by what I saw with Garnett and his son. I mean to put him to
some business as he can go into without capital, and I want to give him
an eddication as he’ll be even wi’ the lawyers and folks, and put me up
to a notion now an’ then.”

Mrs Glegg emitted a long sort of guttural sound with closed lips, that
smiled in mingled pity and scorn.

“It ’ud be a fine deal better for some people,” she said, after that
introductory note, “if they’d let the lawyers alone.”

“Is he at the head of a grammar school, then, this clergyman, such as
that at Market Bewley?” said Mr Deane.

“No, nothing of that,” said Mr Tulliver. “He won’t take more than two
or three pupils, and so he’ll have the more time to attend to ’em, you
know.”

“Ah, and get his eddication done the sooner; they can’t learn much at a
time when there’s so many of ’em,” said uncle Pullet, feeling that he
was getting quite an insight into this difficult matter.

“But he’ll want the more pay, I doubt,” said Mr Glegg.

“Ay, ay, a cool hundred a year, that’s all,” said Mr Tulliver, with
some pride at his own spirited course. “But then, you know, it’s an
investment; Tom’s eddication ’ull be so much capital to him.”

“Ay, there’s something in that,” said Mr Glegg. “Well well, 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 learning 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 unbecoming to be making a
joke when you see your own kin going headlongs to ruin.”

“If you mean me by that,” said Mr Tulliver, considerably nettled, “you
needn’t trouble yourself to fret about me. I can manage my own affairs
without troubling other folks.”

“Bless me!” said Mr Deane, judiciously introducing a new idea, “why,
now I come to think of it, somebody said Wakem was going to send his
son—the deformed lad—to a clergyman, didn’t they, Susan?” (appealing to
his wife).

“I can give no account of it, I’m sure,” said Mrs Deane, closing her
lips very tightly again. Mrs Deane was not a woman to take part in a
scene where missiles were flying.

“Well,” said Mr Tulliver, speaking all the more cheerfully, that Mrs
Glegg might see he didn’t mind her, “if Wakem thinks o’ sending his son
to a clergyman, depend on it I shall make no mistake i’ sending Tom to
one. Wakem’s as big a scoundrel as Old Harry ever made, but he knows
the length of every man’s foot he’s got to deal with. Ay, ay, tell me
who’s Wakem’s butcher, and I’ll tell you where to get your meat.”

“But lawyer Wakem’s son’s got a hump-back,” said Mrs Pullet, who felt
as if the whole business had a funereal aspect; “it’s more nat’ral to
send him to a clergyman.”

“Yes,” said Mr Glegg, interpreting Mrs Pullet’s observation with
erroneous plausibility, “you must consider that, neighbour Tulliver;
Wakem’s son isn’t likely to follow any business. Wakem ’ull make a
gentleman of him, poor fellow.”

“Mr Glegg,” said Mrs G., in a tone which implied that her indignation
would fizz and ooze a little, though she was determined to keep it
corked up, “you’d far better hold your tongue. Mr Tulliver doesn’t want
to know your opinion nor mine either. There’s folks in the world as
know better than everybody else.”

“Why, I should think that’s you, if we’re to trust your own tale,” said
Mr Tulliver, beginning to boil up again.

“Oh, I say nothing,” said Mrs Glegg, sarcastically. “My advice has
never been asked, and I don’t give it.”

“It’ll be the first time, then,” said Mr Tulliver. “It’s the only thing
you’re over-ready at giving.”

“I’ve been over-ready at lending, then, if I haven’t been over-ready at
giving,” said Mrs Glegg. “There’s folks I’ve lent money to, as perhaps
I shall repent o’ lending money to kin.”

“Come, come, come,” said Mr Glegg, soothingly. But Mr Tulliver was not
to be hindered of his retort.

“You’ve got a bond for it, I reckon,” he said; “and you’ve had your
five per cent, kin or no kin.”

“Sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, pleadingly, “drink your wine, and let me
give you some almonds and raisins.”

“Bessy, I’m sorry for you,” said Mrs Glegg, very much with the feeling
of a cur that seizes the opportunity of diverting his bark toward the
man who carries no stick. “It’s poor work talking o’ almonds and
raisins.”

“Lors, sister Glegg, don’t be so quarrelsome,” said Mrs Pullet,
beginning to cry a little. “You may be struck with a fit, getting so
red in the face after dinner, and we are but just out o’ mourning, all
of us,—and all wi’ gowns craped alike and just put by; it’s very bad
among sisters.”

“I should think it is bad,” said Mrs Glegg. “Things are come to a
fine pass when one sister invites the other to her house o’ purpose to
quarrel with her and abuse her.”

“Softly, softly, Jane; be reasonable, be reasonable,” said Mr Glegg.

But while he was speaking, Mr Tulliver, who had by no means said enough
to satisfy his anger, burst out again.

“Who wants to quarrel with you?” he said. “It’s you as can’t let people
alone, but must be gnawing at ’em forever. I should never want to
quarrel with any woman if she kept her place.”

“My place, indeed!” said Mrs Glegg, getting rather more shrill.
“There’s your betters, Mr Tulliver, as are dead and in their grave,
treated me with a different sort o’ respect to what you do; though
I’ve got a husband as’ll sit by and see me abused by them as ’ud never
ha’ had the chance if there hadn’t been them in our family as married
worse than they might ha’ done.”

“If you talk o’ that,” said Mr Tulliver, “my family’s as good as yours,
and better, for it hasn’t got a damned ill-tempered woman in it!”

“Well,” said Mrs Glegg, rising from her chair, “I don’t know whether
you think it’s a fine thing to sit by and hear me swore at, Mr Glegg;
but I’m not going to stay a minute longer in this house. You can stay
behind, and come home with the gig, and I’ll walk home.”

“Dear heart, dear heart!” said Mr Glegg in a melancholy tone, as he
followed his wife out of the room.

“Mr Tulliver, how could you talk so?” said Mrs Tulliver, with the tears
in her eyes.

“Let her go,” said Mr Tulliver, too hot to be damped by any amount of
tears. “Let her go, and the sooner the better; she won’t be trying to
domineer over me again in a hurry.”

“Sister Pullet,” said Mrs Tulliver, helplessly, “do you think it ’ud be
any use for you to go after her and try to pacify her?”

“Better not, better not,” said Mr Deane. “You’ll make it up another
day.”

“Then, sisters, shall we go and look at the children?” said Mrs
Tulliver, drying her eyes.

No proposition could have been more seasonable. Mr Tulliver felt very
much as if the air had been cleared of obtrusive flies now the women
were out of the room. There were few things he liked better than a chat
with Mr Deane, whose close application to business allowed the pleasure
very rarely. Mr Deane, he considered, was the “knowingest” man of his
acquaintance, and he had besides a ready causticity of tongue that made
an agreeable supplement to Mr Tulliver’s own tendency that way, which
had remained in rather an inarticulate condition. And now the women
were gone, they could carry on their serious talk without frivolous
interruption. They could exchange their views concerning the Duke of
Wellington, whose conduct in the Catholic Question had thrown such an
entirely new light on his character; and speak slightingly of his
conduct at the battle of Waterloo, which he would never have won if
there hadn’t been a great many Englishmen at his back, not to speak of
Blucher and the Prussians, who, as Mr Tulliver had heard from a person
of particular knowledge in that matter, had come up in the very nick of
time; though here there was a slight dissidence, Mr Deane remarking
that he was not disposed to give much credit to the Prussians,—the
build of their vessels, together with the unsatisfactory character of
transactions in Dantzic beer, inclining him to form rather a low view
of Prussian pluck generally. Rather beaten on this ground, Mr Tulliver
proceeded to express his fears that the country could never again be
what it used to be; but Mr Deane, attached to a firm of which the
returns were on the increase, naturally took a more lively view of the
present, and had some details to give concerning the state of the
imports, especially in hides and spelter, which soothed Mr Tulliver’s
imagination by throwing into more distant perspective the period when
the country would become utterly the prey of Papists and Radicals, and
there would be no more chance for honest men.

Uncle Pullet sat by and listened with twinkling eyes to these high
matters. He didn’t understand politics himself,—thought they were a
natural gift,—but by what he could make out, this Duke of Wellington
was no better than he should be.