The Mill on the Floss

o Garum Firs

While the possible troubles of Maggie’s future were occupying her
father’s mind, she herself was tasting 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-dresser, with his
well-anointed coronal locks tending wavily upward, like the simulated
pyramid of flame on a monumental urn, seemed to her at that moment the
most formidable of her contemporaries, 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 Tulliver’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 Tulliver
had on her visiting costume, with a protective apparatus of brown
holland, 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 make yourself
so ugly!” and Tom’s cheeks were looking particularly brilliant as a
relief to his best blue suit, which he wore with becoming calmness,
having, after a little wrangling, effected what was always the one
point of interest to him in his toilet: he had transferred all the
contents of his everyday pockets to those actually in wear.

As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as she had been yesterday;
no accidents ever happened to her clothes, and she was never
uncomfortable in them, so that she looked with wondering pity at
Maggie, pouting and writhing under the exasperating tucker. Maggie
would certainly have torn it off, if she had not been checked by the
remembrance of her recent humiliation about her hair; as it was, she
confined herself to fretting and twisting, and behaving peevishly about
the card-houses which they were allowed to build till dinner, as a
suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best clothes. Tom could
build perfect pyramids of houses; but Maggie’s would never bear the
laying on the roof. It was always so with the things that Maggie made;
and Tom had deduced the conclusion that no girls could ever make
anything. But it happened that Lucy proved wonderfully clever at
building; she handled the cards so lightly, and moved so gently, that
Tom condescended to admire her houses as well as his own, the more
readily because she had asked him to teach her. Maggie, too, would have
admired Lucy’s houses, and would have given up her own unsuccessful
building to contemplate them, without ill temper, if her tucker had not
made her peevish, and if Tom had not inconsiderately laughed when her
houses fell, and told her she was “a stupid.”

“Don’t laugh at me, Tom!” she burst out angrily; “I’m not a stupid. I
know a great many things you don’t.”

“Oh, I dare say, Miss Spitfire! I’d never be such a cross thing as you,
making faces like that. Lucy doesn’t do so. I like Lucy better than
you; I wish Lucy was my sister.”

“Then it’s very wicked and cruel of you to wish so,” said Maggie,
starting up hurriedly from her place on the floor, and upsetting Tom’s
wonderful pagoda. She really did not mean it, but the circumstantial
evidence was against her, and Tom turned white with anger, but said
nothing; he would have struck her, only he knew it was cowardly to
strike a girl, and Tom Tulliver was quite determined he would never do
anything cowardly.

Maggie stood in dismay and terror, while Tom got up from the floor and
walked away, pale, from the scattered ruins of his pagoda, and Lucy
looked on mutely, like a kitten pausing from its lapping.

“Oh, Tom,” said Maggie, at last, going half-way toward him, “I didn’t
mean to knock it down, indeed, indeed I didn’t.”

Tom took no notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas
out of his pocket, and shot them with his thumbnail against the window,
vaguely at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hitting a
superannuated blue-bottle which was exposing its imbecility in the
spring sunshine, clearly against the views of Nature, who had provided
Tom and the peas for the speedy destruction of this weak individual.

Thus the morning had been made heavy to Maggie, and Tom’s persistent
coldness to her all through their walk spoiled the fresh air and
sunshine for her. He called Lucy to look at the half-built bird’s nest
without caring to show it Maggie, and peeled a willow switch for Lucy
and himself, without offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, “Maggie,
shouldn’t you like one?” but Tom was deaf.

Still, the sight of the peacock opportunely spreading his tail on the
stackyard wall, just as they reached Garum Firs, was enough to divert
the mind temporarily from personal grievances. And this was only the
beginning of beautiful sights at Garum Firs. All the farmyard life was
wonderful there,—bantams, speckled and top-knotted; Friesland hens,
with their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea-fowls that flew
and screamed and dropped their pretty spotted feathers; pouter-pigeons
and a tame magpie; nay, a goat, and a wonderful brindled dog, half
mastiff, half bull-dog, as large as a lion. Then there were white
railings and white gates all about, and glittering weathercocks of
various design, and garden-walks paved with pebbles in beautiful
patterns,—nothing was quite common at Garum Firs; and Tom thought that
the unusual size of the toads there was simply due to the general
unusualness which characterised uncle Pullet’s possessions as a
gentleman farmer. Toads who paid rent were naturally leaner. As for the
house, it was not less remarkable; it had a receding centre, and two
wings with battlemented turrets, and was covered with glittering white
stucco.

Uncle Pullet had seen the expected party approaching from the window,
and made haste to unbar and unchain the front door, kept always in this
fortified condition from fear of tramps, who might be supposed to know
of the glass case of stuffed birds in the hall, and to contemplate
rushing in and carrying it away on their heads. Aunt Pullet, too,
appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her sister was within hearing
said, “Stop the children, for God’s sake! Bessy; don’t let ’em come up
the door-steps; Sally’s bringing the old mat and the duster, to rub
their shoes.”

Mrs Pullet’s front-door mats were by no means intended to wipe shoes
on; the very scraper had a deputy to do its dirty work. Tom rebelled
particularly against this shoewiping, which he always considered in the
light of an indignity to his sex. He felt it as the beginning of the
disagreeables incident to a visit at aunt Pullet’s, where he had once
been compelled to sit with towels wrapped round his boots; a fact which
may serve to correct the too hasty conclusion that a visit to Garum
Firs must have been a great treat to a young gentleman fond of
animals,—fond, that is, of throwing stones at them.

The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine companions; it was
the mounting of the polished oak stairs, which had very handsome
carpets rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so that the ascent of
these glossy steps might have served, in barbarous times, as a trial by
ordeal from which none but the most spotless virtue could have come off
with unbroken limbs. Sophy’s weakness about these polished stairs was
always a subject of bitter remonstrance on Mrs Glegg’s part; but Mrs
Tulliver ventured on no comment, only thinking to herself it was a
mercy when she and the children were safe on the landing.

“Mrs Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, in a
pathetic tone, as Mrs Tulliver adjusted her cap.

“Has she, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver, with an air of much interest.
“And how do you like it?”

“It’s apt to make a mess with clothes, taking ’em out and putting ’em
in again,” said Mrs Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and
looking at them earnestly, “but it ’ud be a pity for you to go away
without seeing it. There’s no knowing what may happen.”

Mrs Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious consideration,
which determined her to single out a particular key.

“I’m afraid it’ll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister,” said
Mrs Tulliver; “but I should like to see what sort of a crown she’s
made you.”

Mrs Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very
bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find a
new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from
a too superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In
this wardrobe Mrs Pullet was seeking something small enough to be
hidden among layers of linen,—it was a door-key.

“You must come with me into the best room,” said Mrs Pullet.

“May the children come too, sister?” inquired Mrs Tulliver, who saw
that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager.

“Well,” said aunt Pullet, reflectively, “it’ll perhaps be safer for ’em
to come; they’ll be touching something if we leave ’em behind.”

So they went in procession along the bright and slippery corridor,
dimly lighted by the semi-lunar top of the window which rose above the
closed shutter; it was really quite solemn. Aunt Pullet paused and
unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the
passage,—a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly,
showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white shrouds.
Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upward. Lucy laid
hold of Maggie’s frock, and Maggie’s heart beat rapidly.

Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then unlocked the wardrobe,
with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the
funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves
that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet
after sheet of silver paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the
sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would have
preferred something more strikingly preternatural. But few things could
have been more impressive to Mrs Tulliver. She looked all round it in
silence for some moments, and then said emphatically, “Well, sister,
I’ll never speak against the full crowns again!”

It was a great concession, and Mrs Pullet felt it; she felt something
was due to it.

“You’d like to see it on, sister?” she said sadly. “I’ll open the
shutter a bit further.”

“Well, if you don’t mind taking off your cap, sister,” said Mrs
Tulliver.

Mrs Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a
jutting promontory of curls which was common to the more mature and
judicious women of those times, and placing the bonnet on her head,
turned slowly round, like a draper’s lay-figure, that Mrs Tulliver
might miss no point of view.

“I’ve sometimes thought there’s a loop too much o’ ribbon on this left
side, sister; what do you think?” said Mrs Pullet.

Mrs Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned her
head on one side. “Well, I think it’s best as it is; if you meddled
with it, sister, you might repent.”

“That’s true,” said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and looking at
it contemplatively.

“How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?” said Mrs
Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting
a humble imitation of this chef-d’œuvre made from a piece of silk she
had at home.

Mrs Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered,
“Pullet pays for it; he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum
Church, let the next best be whose it would.”

She began slowly to adjust the trimmings, in preparation for returning
it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken
a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.

“Ah,” she said at last, “I may never wear it twice, sister; who knows?”

“Don’t talk o’ that sister,” answered Mrs Tulliver. “I hope you’ll have
your health this summer.”

“Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon after
I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we can’t think
o’ wearing crape less nor half a year for him.”

“That would be unlucky,” said Mrs Tulliver, entering thoroughly into
the possibility of an inopportune decease. “There’s never so much
pleasure i’ wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the
crowns are so chancy,—never two summers alike.”

“Ah, it’s the way i’ this world,” said Mrs Pullet, returning the bonnet
to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a silence
characterised by head-shaking, until they had all issued from the
solemn chamber and were in her own room again. Then, beginning to cry,
she said, “Sister, if you should never see that bonnet again till I’m
dead and gone, you’ll remember I showed it you this day.”

Mrs Tulliver felt that she ought to be affected, but she was a woman of
sparse tears, stout and healthy; she couldn’t cry so much as her sister
Pullet did, and had often felt her deficiency at funerals. Her effort
to bring tears into her eyes issued in an odd contraction of her face.
Maggie, looking on attentively, felt that there was some painful
mystery about her aunt’s bonnet which she was considered too young to
understand; indignantly conscious, all the while, that she could have
understood that, as well as everything else, if she had been taken into
confidence.

When they went down, uncle Pullet observed, with some acumen, that he
reckoned the missis had been showing her bonnet,—that was what had made
them so long upstairs. With Tom the interval had seemed still longer,
for he had been seated in irksome constraint on the edge of a sofa
directly opposite his uncle Pullet, who regarded him with twinkling
gray eyes, and occasionally addressed him as “Young sir.”

“Well, young sir, what do you learn at school?” was a standing question
with uncle Pullet; whereupon Tom always looked sheepish, rubbed his
hands across his face, and answered, “I don’t know.” It was altogether
so embarrassing to be seated tête-à-tête with uncle Pullet, that Tom
could not even look at the prints on the walls, or the flycages, or the
wonderful flower-pots; he saw nothing but his uncle’s gaiters. Not that
Tom was in awe of his uncle’s mental superiority; indeed, he had made
up his mind that he didn’t want to be a gentleman farmer, because he
shouldn’t like to be such a thin-legged, silly fellow as his uncle
Pullet,—a molly-coddle, in fact. A boy’s sheepishness is by no means a
sign of overmastering reverence; and while you are making encouraging
advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of
your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer. The
only consolation I can suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably
thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you have mastered a
restive horse, or thrashed a drayman, or have got a gun in your hand,
that these shy juniors feel you to be a truly admirable and enviable
character. At least, I am quite sure of Tom Tulliver’s sentiments on
these points. In very tender years, when he still wore a lace border
under his outdoor cap, he was often observed peeping through the bars
of a gate and making minatory gestures with his small forefinger while
he scolded the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to strike
terror into their astonished minds; indicating thus early that desire
for mastery over the inferior animals, wild and domestic, including
cockchafers, neighbours’ dogs, and small sisters, which in all ages has
been an attribute of so much promise for the fortunes of our race. Now,
Mr Pullet never rode anything taller than a low pony, and was the least
predatory of men, considering firearms dangerous, as apt to go off of
themselves by nobody’s particular desire. So that Tom was not without
strong reasons when, in confidential talk with a chum, he had described
uncle Pullet as a nincompoop, taking care at the same time to observe
that he was a very “rich fellow.”

The only alleviating circumstance in a tête-à-tête with uncle Pullet
was that he kept a variety of lozenges and peppermint-drops about his
person, and when at a loss for conversation, he filled up the void by
proposing a mutual solace of this kind.

“Do you like peppermints, young sir?” required only a tacit answer when
it was accompanied by a presentation of the article in question.

The appearance of the little girls suggested to uncle Pullet the
further solace of small sweet-cakes, of which he also kept a stock
under lock and key for his own private eating on wet days; but the
three children had no sooner got the tempting delicacy between their
fingers, than aunt Pullet desired them to abstain from eating it till
the tray and the plates came, since with those crisp cakes they would
make the floor “all over” crumbs. Lucy didn’t mind that much, for the
cake was so pretty, she thought it was rather a pity to eat it; but
Tom, watching his opportunity while the elders were talking, hastily
stowed it in his mouth at two bites, and chewed it furtively. As for
Maggie, becoming fascinated, as usual, by a print of Ulysses and
Nausicaa, which uncle Pullet had bought as a “pretty Scripture thing,”
she presently let fall her cake, and in an unlucky movement crushed it
beneath her foot,—a source of so much agitation to aunt Pullet and
conscious disgrace to Maggie, that she began to despair of hearing the
musical snuff-box to-day, till, after some reflection, it occurred to
her that Lucy was in high favour enough to venture on asking for a
tune. So she whispered to Lucy; and Lucy, who always did what she was
desired to do, went up quietly to her uncle’s knee, and blushing all
over her neck while she fingered her necklace, said, “Will you please
play us a tune, uncle?”

Lucy thought it was by reason of some exceptional talent in uncle
Pullet that the snuff-box played such beautiful tunes, and indeed the
thing was viewed in that light by the majority of his neighbours in
Garum. Mr Pullet had bought the box, to begin with, and he understood
winding it up, and knew which tune it was going to play beforehand;
altogether the possession of this unique “piece of music” was a proof
that Mr Pullet’s character was not of that entire nullity which might
otherwise have been attributed to it. But uncle Pullet, when entreated
to exhibit his accomplishment, never depreciated it by a too ready
consent. “We’ll see about it,” was the answer he always gave, carefully
abstaining from any sign of compliance till a suitable number of
minutes had passed. Uncle Pullet had a programme for all great social
occasions, and in this way fenced himself in from much painful
confusion and perplexing freedom of will.

Perhaps the suspense did heighten Maggie’s enjoyment when the fairy
tune began; for the first time she quite forgot that she had a load on
her mind, that Tom was angry with her; and by the time “Hush, ye pretty
warbling choir,” had been played, her face wore that bright look of
happiness, while she sat immovable with her hands clasped, which
sometimes comforted her mother with the sense that Maggie could look
pretty now and then, in spite of her brown skin. But when the magic
music ceased, she jumped up, and running toward Tom, put her arm round
his neck and said, “Oh, Tom, isn’t it pretty?”

Lest you should think it showed a revolting insensibility in Tom that
he felt any new anger toward Maggie for this uncalled-for and, to him,
inexplicable caress, I must tell you that he had his glass of cowslip
wine in his hand, and that she jerked him so as to make him spill half
of it. He must have been an extreme milksop not to say angrily, “Look
there, now!” especially when his resentment was sanctioned, as it was,
by general disapprobation of Maggie’s behaviour.

“Why don’t you sit still, Maggie?” her mother said peevishly.

“Little gells mustn’t come to see me if they behave in that way,” said
aunt Pullet.

“Why, you’re too rough, little miss,” said uncle Pullet.

Poor Maggie sat down again, with the music all chased out of her soul,
and the seven small demons all in again.

Mrs Tulliver, foreseeing nothing but misbehaviour while the children
remained indoors, took an early opportunity of suggesting that, now
they were rested after their walk, they might go and play out of doors;
and aunt Pullet gave permission, only enjoining them not to go off the
paved walks in the garden, and if they wanted to see the poultry fed,
to view them from a distance on the horse-block; a restriction which
had been imposed ever since Tom had been found guilty of running after
the peacock, with an illusory idea that fright would make one of its
feathers drop off.

Mrs Tulliver’s thoughts had been temporarily diverted from the quarrel
with Mrs Glegg by millinery and maternal cares, but now the great theme
of the bonnet was thrown into perspective, and the children were out of
the way, yesterday’s anxieties recurred.

“It weighs on my mind so as never was,” she said, by way of opening the
subject, “sister Glegg’s leaving the house in that way. I’m sure I’d no
wish t’ offend a sister.”

“Ah,” said aunt Pullet, “there’s no accounting for what Jane ’ull do. I
wouldn’t speak of it out o’ the family, if it wasn’t to Dr Turnbull;
but it’s my belief Jane lives too low. I’ve said so to Pullet often and
often, and he knows it.”

“Why, you said so last Monday was a week, when we came away from
drinking tea with ’em,” said Mr Pullet, beginning to nurse his knee and
shelter it with his pocket handkerchief, as was his way when the
conversation took an interesting turn.

“Very like I did,” said Mrs Pullet, “for you remember when I said
things, better than I can remember myself. He’s got a wonderful memory,
Pullet has,” she continued, looking pathetically at her sister. “I
should be poorly off if he was to have a stroke, for he always
remembers when I’ve got to take my doctor’s stuff; and I’m taking three
sorts now.”

“There’s the ‘pills as before’ every other night, and the new drops at
eleven and four, and the ’fervescing mixture ‘when agreeable,’”
rehearsed Mr Pullet, with a punctuation determined by a lozenge on his
tongue.

“Ah, perhaps it ’ud be better for sister Glegg if she’d go to the
doctor sometimes, instead o’ chewing Turkey rhubarb whenever there’s
anything the matter with her,” said Mrs Tulliver, who naturally saw the
wide subject of medicine chiefly in relation to Mrs Glegg.

“It’s dreadful to think on,” said aunt Pullet, raising her hands and
letting them fall again, “people playing with their own insides in that
way! And it’s flying i’ the face o’ Providence; for what are the
doctors for, if we aren’t to call ’em in? And when folks have got the
money to pay for a doctor, it isn’t respectable, as I’ve told Jane many
a time. I’m ashamed of acquaintance knowing it.”

“Well, we’ve no call to be ashamed,” said Mr Pullet, “for Doctor
Turnbull hasn’t got such another patient as you i’ this parish, now old
Mrs Sutton’s gone.”

“Pullet keeps all my physic-bottles, did you know, Bessy?” said Mrs
Pullet. “He won’t have one sold. He says it’s nothing but right folks
should see ’em when I’m gone. They fill two o’ the long store-room
shelves a’ready; but,” she added, beginning to cry a little, “it’s well
if they ever fill three. I may go before I’ve made up the dozen o’
these last sizes. The pill-boxes are in the closet in my room,—you’ll
remember that, sister,—but there’s nothing to show for the boluses, if
it isn’t the bills.”

“Don’t talk o’ your going, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver; “I should have
nobody to stand between me and sister Glegg if you was gone. And
there’s nobody but you can get her to make it up with Mr Tulliver, for
sister Deane’s never o’ my side, and if she was, it’s not to be looked
for as she can speak like them as have got an independent fortin.”

“Well, your husband is awk’ard, you know, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet,
good-naturedly ready to use her deep depression on her sister’s account
as well as her own. “He’s never behaved quite so pretty to our family
as he should do, and the children take after him,—the boy’s very
mischievous, and runs away from his aunts and uncles, and the gell’s
rude and brown. It’s your bad luck, and I’m sorry for you, Bessy; for
you was allays my favourite sister, and we allays liked the same
patterns.”

“I know Tulliver’s hasty, and says odd things,” said Mrs Tulliver,
wiping away one small tear from the corner of her eye; “but I’m sure
he’s never been the man, since he married me, to object to my making
the friends o’ my side o’ the family welcome to the house.”

“I don’t want to make the worst of you, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet,
compassionately, “for I doubt you’ll have trouble enough without that;
and your husband’s got that poor sister and her children hanging on
him,—and so given to lawing, they say. I doubt he’ll leave you poorly
off when he dies. Not as I’d have it said out o’ the family.”

This view of her position was naturally far from cheering to Mrs
Tulliver. Her imagination was not easily acted on, but she could not
help thinking that her case was a hard one, since it appeared that
other people thought it hard.

“I’m sure, sister, I can’t help myself,” she said, urged by the fear
lest her anticipated misfortunes might be held retributive, to take
comprehensive review of her past conduct. “There’s no woman strives
more for her children; and I’m sure at scouring-time this Lady-day as
I’ve had all the bedhangings taken down I did as much as the two gells
put together; and there’s the last elder-flower wine I’ve
made—beautiful! I allays offer it along with the sherry, though sister
Glegg will have it I’m so extravagant; and as for liking to have my
clothes tidy, and not go a fright about the house, there’s nobody in
the parish can say anything against me in respect o’ backbiting and
making mischief, for I don’t wish anybody any harm; and nobody loses by
sending me a porkpie, for my pies are fit to show with the best o’ my
neighbours’; and the linen’s so in order as if I was to die to-morrow I
shouldn’t be ashamed. A woman can do no more nor she can.”

“But it’s all o’ no use, you know, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, holding her
head on one side, and fixing her eyes pathetically on her sister, “if
your husband makes away with his money. Not but what if you was sold
up, and other folks bought your furniture, it’s a comfort to think as
you’ve kept it well rubbed. And there’s the linen, with your maiden
mark on, might go all over the country. It ’ud be a sad pity for our
family.” Mrs Pullet shook her head slowly.

“But what can I do, sister?” said Mrs Tulliver. “Mr Tulliver’s not a
man to be dictated to,—not if I was to go to the parson and get by
heart what I should tell my husband for the best. And I’m sure I don’t
pretend to know anything about putting out money and all that. I could
never see into men’s business as sister Glegg does.”

“Well, you’re like me in that, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet; “and I think it
’ud be a deal more becoming o’ Jane if she’d have that pier-glass
rubbed oftener,—there was ever so many spots on it last week,—instead
o’ dictating to folks as have more comings in than she ever had, and
telling ’em what they’re to do with their money. But Jane and me were
allays contrairy; she would have striped things, and I like spots.
You like a spot too, Bessy; we allays hung together i’ that.”

“Yes, Sophy,” said Mrs Tulliver, “I remember our having a blue ground
with a white spot both alike,—I’ve got a bit in a bed-quilt now; and if
you would but go and see sister Glegg, and persuade her to make it up
with Tulliver, I should take it very kind of you. You was allays a good
sister to me.”

“But the right thing ’ud be for Tulliver to go and make it up with her
himself, and say he was sorry for speaking so rash. If he’s borrowed
money of her, he shouldn’t be above that,” said Mrs Pullet, whose
partiality did not blind her to principles; she did not forget what was
due to people of independent fortune.

“It’s no use talking o’ that,” said poor Mrs Tulliver, almost
peevishly. “If I was to go down on my bare knees on the gravel to
Tulliver, he’d never humble himself.”

“Well, you can’t expect me to persuade Jane to beg pardon,” said Mrs
Pullet. “Her temper’s beyond everything; it’s well if it doesn’t carry
her off her mind, though there never was any of our family went to a
madhouse.”

“I’m not thinking of her begging pardon,” said Mrs Tulliver. “But if
she’d just take no notice, and not call her money in; as it’s not so
much for one sister to ask of another; time ’ud mend things, and
Tulliver ’ud forget all about it, and they’d be friends again.”

Mrs Tulliver, you perceive, was not aware of her husband’s irrevocable
determination to pay in the five hundred pounds; at least such a
determination exceeded her powers of belief.

“Well, Bessy,” said Mrs Pullet, mournfully, “I don’t want to help you
on to ruin. I won’t be behindhand i’ doing you a good turn, if it is to
be done. And I don’t like it said among acquaintance as we’ve got
quarrels in the family. I shall tell Jane that; and I don’t mind
driving to Jane’s tomorrow, if Pullet doesn’t mind. What do you say, Mr
Pullet?”

“I’ve no objections,” said Mr Pullet, who was perfectly contented with
any course the quarrel might take, so that Mr Tulliver did not apply to
him for money. Mr Pullet was nervous about his investments, and did
not see how a man could have any security for his money unless he
turned it into land.

After a little further discussion as to whether it would not be better
for Mrs Tulliver to accompany them on a visit to sister Glegg, Mrs
Pullet, observing that it was tea-time, turned to reach from a drawer a
delicate damask napkin, which she pinned before her in the fashion of
an apron. The door did, in fact, soon open, but instead of the
tea-tray, Sally introduced an object so startling that both Mrs Pullet
and Mrs Tulliver gave a scream, causing uncle Pullet to swallow his
lozenge—for the fifth time in his life, as he afterward noted.