 Book 1 Chapter 7 at the Mill on the Floss This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Lucy Burgoyn. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott. Book 1 Boy and Girl. Chapter 7. Enter the aunts and uncles. The Dodgson's were certainly a handsome family and Mrs. Clegg was not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs. Tulliver's armchair, no impartial observer could have denied that for a woman of 50 she had a very comely face and figure. Though Tom and Maggie considered their aunt Clegg as the type of ugliness. It is true she despised the advantages of costume, but 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. Clegg died, it would be found that she had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer. Of her wardrobe in the spotted chamber, that ever Mrs. Wall of St. Ogg's had bought in her life. Although Mrs. Wall wore her lace before it was paid for. So of her cool fronts, Mrs. Clegg had doubtlessed the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various degrees of fuzzy lexness. But to look out on the weekday 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. Clegg wore one of her third best fronts on a weekday visit, but not at her sister's house, especially not at Mrs. Tulliver's, who, since her marriage, had heard her sister's feelings greatly. By wearing her own hair, though, as Mrs. Clegg observed to Mrs. Deanne, a mother of a family, like Bessie, with the husband always going to law, might have been expected to know better, but Bessie was always weak. So if Mrs. Clegg's front today was more fussy and lex than usual, she had a design under it. She intended the most pointed and cutting illusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blonde curls, separated from each other by a dew wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs. Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Clegg's unkindness on the subject of these un-matronly curls, that the consciousness of looking the handsomer for their naturally-administered support. Mrs. Clegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house today, united 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 chavaux de frise of Miss Galania's grilling. One would need to be learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Clegg's slate coloured silk gown must have been, but from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a moldy odour about it, suggestive of a damp cloth's chest, it was probable that it belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come recently into wear. Mrs. Clegg held her large gold watch in her hand, with the many double-chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs. Talibah, who had just returned from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might be by other people's cocks and watches, it was gone half past 12 by hers. I don't know what Ailes' sister pulled, 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 father's time, and not for one sister to sit half an hour before the others came, but if the ways of the family are altered, it shan'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 Deanne, she used to be more like me, but if you'll take my advice, Bessie, you'll put the dinner forward a bit sooner than put it back, because folks are late as ought to have known better. Oh dear, there's no fear, but what there'll be all here in time, Sister, said Mrs. Talibah, in a 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 of wine. Well, Bessie, said Mrs. Gleed, with a bitter smile and a scarcely perceptible toss of a head, I should have 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 hope 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, Bessie. Why, Jay, what can I do? Mr. Talibah doesn't like his dinner before two o'clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because of you. Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands, therefore putting everything off. They'll put the dinner off till after tea, if they've got wives as a way to give in to such work. But it's a pity for you, Bessie, as you haven't got more strength of 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 it's sooner eat across the dry bread, nor help to ruin you with extravagance. I wonder, you don't take pattern by your sister Deanne. She's far more sensible, and here you've got two children to provide for, and your husband spent your fortune I go into law, and is likely to spend his own too. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of for the kitchen, Mrs. Gleag added, in a tone of emphatic protest, and a plain pudding with a spoonful of sugar and no spice, it'd be far more becoming. With Sister Gleag 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 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, Bessie, I can't leave your children enough out of my savings to keep them from ruin, and you mustn't look to have any of Mr. Gleag'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. Gleag was speaking, was an interruption highly welcomed 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. Gleag 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 chase stopped before Mrs. Tulliver's door, and it was apparently in 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, whatever 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 chase, not without pasting a glance at Mr. Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from injuring. 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 ballooned sleeves, a bunded mantle, and a large, be-feathered and be-ribbonned bonnet, as a small fishing smack bears to a brink with all its sail 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 green, from a sorrow of a hotentot to that of a woman in large backroom sleeves, with several bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and delicate ribbon strings, what a long series of graduations in the united child of civilisation. The abandonment characteristic of grief is checked and buried in the supplest manner, so as to present an interesting problem to their analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and eyes half-blinded by the Mr. Tears, she were to walk with the two devious steps through a dull place, she might crush her backroom 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 hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly backward, a touching gesture indicated 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 awareness, has itself become weary. She looks down pensively at her bracelets and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studded fortuity which would be gratifying to her mind if it were once more in a calm and healthy state. Mrs. Poole brushed each doorpost 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 said muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlour where Mrs. Gleeg was seated. Well, sister, your lad, what's the matter, said Mrs. Gleeg rather sharply as they shook hands. Mrs. Poole 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. Poole, and her legs were as thick as my body she added with deep sadness after a pause. They tapped her no end at times, and the water they say you might have swum in it if you like. Well, Sophie, it's a mercy she's gone, then. Whoever she may be, said Mrs. Gleeg, with the promptitude and emphasis of the mind naturally clear and decided that I can't think who you're talking of for my part. But I know, said Mrs. Poole, sighing and shaking her head, and there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. I know as it's old Mrs. Sutton at the twenty lambs. Well, she's no kin of yours, nor much acquaintance as I've ever heard of, said Mrs. Gleeg, 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 a pillow constant. There isn't many old parishners like her, I doubt, and they say she took as much visit as a filler wagon observed Mr. Poole. Ah, sighed Mrs. Poole. 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. Poole, if ever you have the dropsy, you'll think of me. She did so so, added Mrs. Poole, beginning to cry bitterly again. Those were her very words, and she's to be buried a Saturday, and Poole's bid to do the funeral. Sophie, said Mrs. Gleeg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of rational remonstrance. Sophie, 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 Francis Neither, nor any of the family as I'd ever heard of. You couldn't fret no more than this, if we'd heard as Aunt Cousin Abbott had died suddenly, without making his will. Mrs. Poole was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather flattered than indignant, at being upgraded 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. Poole 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. Poole, 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 them as Mrs. Sutton, and she's left no legacies to speak on, left it all in a lump to our husband's nevy. There wasn't much good by being so rich then, said Mrs. Glee, if she'd got none, that husband's kin to leave her to. It's poor work when that's all you've got to pinch yourself for, not as on one of those as you'd 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 of your own family. I'm sure, Sister, said Mrs. Poole, who had recovered sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully. It's a nice sort of man, as Mrs. Sutton has left her money too, for he's troubled with the asthma 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 the hair-skin on his chest and has a trembling in his toe. Quite a gentleman, sort of 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. Poole, I can feel for you. That was what he said, the very words, said Mrs. Poole, 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 glosses at a shilling, and draughts at 18 pence. Sister, I may as well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see, as the cat box was put out, she added, turning to her husband. Mr. Poole, 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. Less Mrs. Clegg should begin to explain her feelings about Sophie's being the first dogson who ever ruined her constitution with Dr. Stuck. Mrs. Tulliver was fond of going upstairs with her sister Poole, and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and discussing millinery in general. This was part of Bessie's weakness that stirred Mrs. Clegg's sisterly compassion. Bessie went far too well-dressed, considering, and she was too proud to dress her child, in good clothing, her sister Clegg 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. Clegg did her sister Bessie some injustice. For Mrs. Tulliver had really made great efforts to induce Maggie to wear a leg horn bonnet, and a dyed silk frock made out of her aunt's glegs. But the result had been such that Mrs. Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom. For Maggie, declaring that the frock's milk, if 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 the lettuces. I must urge, in excuse for Maggie, that Tom had laughed at her 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 Bessie had those normty or for children. She would do the best she could by then, but it was a pity they weren't as good and as pretty as sister Dianne's child. Maggie and Tom, on their part, thought their Aunt Pullet tolerable, chiefly because she was not their Aunt Fleek. Tom almost 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 Bessie's children were Tullivers and that Tom, notwithstanding he had the Dodson complexion, was likely to be as contrary 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 adieu to pay his rent. But when Mrs. Pullet was alone with Mrs. Tulliver upstairs, the remarks were naturally to the disadvantage of Mrs. Fleek and they agreed, in confidence, that there was no knowing what sort of fright Sister Jane would come out next, but their tete-tate was curtailed by the appearance of Mrs. De Arne with little Lucy, and Mrs. Tulliver had to look on with a silent pain while Lucy's boned curls were adjusted. It was quite unaccountable that Mrs. De Arne, the thinnest and sallowest of all the missed options, 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 today when she and Tom came in from the garden with their father and their uncle Gleed. 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 superficialise 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 netted 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 dark than her curves, 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 at their own age, and she made the queen of it just like Lucy, with a little crown on her head and a little skeptic 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 still 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. Hey day, said Aunt Glee, with loud emphasis, do little boys and girls come into a room without taking notice of their uncles and aunts. That wasn't the way when I was a little girl. Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears, said Mrs Tullover, 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 your good children are you, said Aunt Glee, 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 Glee 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, and making them feel that they were accountable creatures, and might be a salutary check on naughty tendencies. Fessy'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 the melancholy expression at their mother. I think the girl 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 Deanne? I can't say. I'm sure, sister, said Mrs. Deanne, 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 used to be, as well as Fessy, it had the child's hair cut, so as it would lie smooth. A dreadful result was gathering in Maggie's breast, but it was arrested by the desire to know from her aunt Deanne whether she would leave Lucy behind. Aunt Deanne would hardly ever let Lucy come to see them. After various reasons for refusal, Mrs. Deanne 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 us stay, Mrs. Deanne. Let us stay, said Mr. Deanne, a large but alert-looking man with a type of physique to be seen in all ranks of English society. Bull crown, red whiskers, full forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see noblemen like Mr. Deanne, and you may see grosses all day labourers like him. But the keenest 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. Deanne'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 acknowledgement of his valuable services as manager. No man was thought more highly of in St. Augs than Mr. Deanne, 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 the nurse's sister pulled it. There was no knowing where a man would stop, who had got his foot into a great meal owning, ship owning business, like that of guest and co, with a banking concern attached. And Mrs. Deanne, as her intimate female friends observed, was proud and having enough. She wouldn't let her husband stand still, in the will, for want of sparing. 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 a go at once to a draw, 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, knotting his head in an admonitry manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors. Never mind, make haste, said Maggie, giving a little stand 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 mess of hair. One delicious grinding snip, and then another, and another, and the hinder locks fell heavily on the floor, and Maggie still 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 knee 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 pain. 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 on. He hurried downstairs and left poor Maggie to that bitter sense of their 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. The 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 willful 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 gift 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 justifiable lack, 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 everyone 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 flocks, as ojaks 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, that 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, that we can no longer recall the poignancy at that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those key moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have lengthened 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 anyone who can recover the experience of this childhood, not merely with 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 mid-summer to another, what he felt when his skilled fellows shut him out of their game, because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere willfulness, 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 sulkeness, or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailcoat that ha, 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 perspective-less conception of life, that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not poo-poo the griefs of our children. Miss Maggie, you ought to come down this minute, said Kezire, entering the room hurriedly. Look, what have you been doing? I never see such a fright. Don't, Kezire, said Maggie angrily. Go away, but I tell you you ought to come down, Miss. This minute, your mother says so, said Kezire, going up to Maggie, and taking her by the hand to raise her from the floor. Get away, Kezire. I don't want any dinner, said Maggie, resisting Kezire's arm. I shan't come. Oh, well, I can't stay. I've got to wait at dinner, said Kezire, 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 of goodies, and mother says you ought to come. What are you crying for, you little spoonie? Oh, it was dreadful. Tom was so hard and unconsumed. 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 group 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, Maggie? Shall I bring you a bit of pudding when I've had mine, and a custard and things? Yes, said Maggie, beginning to feel like 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 cow slip 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 cow slip 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 at the dining parlor door, peeking in when it was a jar. 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 screen 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 tablecloth. For Khaziah 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 perversiveness, which was inflicting its own punishment by depriving Maggie of half her dinner. Mrs. Tulliver's screen made all eyes turn towards the same point as her own, and Maggie's cheeks and ears began to burn, while Uncle Gleg, a kind-looking, white-haired old gentleman, said, Hey, Dave, what little girl's this? Why, I don't know her. Is it some little girl you've picked up in the road, Khaziah? Why, she's gone and cut her hair herself, said Mr. Tulliver, in an undertone to Mr. D'Arne, 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 Paul, and perhaps he never, in his life, made an observation which was felt to be so lacerating. Five for shame, said Aunt Gleg, in her loudest, severest tone of reproof. Little girls, as cut their own hair, should be whipped and fed on bread and water, not come and sit down with their aunts and uncles. Aye, aye, said Uncle Gleg, meaning to give a playful turn to his 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 Paul, in a pitting tone. It's very bad luck, sister, as the girl should be so brown. The boy's fair enough. I doubt it'll stand in her way. I like 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've 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, hit 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 either right to cut it off if it plagued you. Give over crying. Father will 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 everyone else said that her father had done very ill by his children. How your husband does spoil that child, Bessie, said Mrs. Gleed, 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 have been a different sort of 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 at 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 dispatched, and everyone'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 Gleg said, or Sister Pullet either, but at least they would not be able to say. If the thing turned out ill, that Bessie 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. De Arne. 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. Gleg and Mr. De Arne. I've settled to send him to a Mr. Stelling, a parson down at King's Lawton. There, an uncommon clever fellow, I understand, as he'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 wed 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 showmen who, dressed in a 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 skillmaster 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 focality under favouring circumstances. And Uncle Pullet had a great natural focality 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 amaze twinkling in his eyes, looking at Mr. Gleed and Mr. Deanne, to see if they showed any signs of comprehension. Why, because the parson's are the best skillmasters, 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. Jacob's at the 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 Jacob's. And this Mr. Stulling, by what I can make out, is the sort of man I want, and I made my boy to go him at mid-summer. 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 clergyman, having highest notions in general, said Mr. Deanne, taking snuff vigorously, as he always did when wishing to maintain a neutral position. Why, do you think the parson will teach him to know a good sample of weak? When he sees it, no, but Tulliver, said Mr. Gleed, who responded at 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 in the 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. Gleed, with a tone of bitter meaning, I should like to know what good is to come to the boy by bringing him up above his footing. Why, said Mr. Tulliver, not looking at Mrs. Gleed, 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've made up my mind by what I saw with Garnet and his son. I mean to put him to some business as he can go into with our capital, and I want to give him an education, as he'll be, even with the lawyers and folks, and put me up to a notion now and then. Mrs. Gleed emitted a long sort of guttural sound with closed lips that smiled in mingle pity and scorn. It'd be a fine deal better for some people, she said, after that introductory note, if they'd let the lawyers alone. Is yet the head of a grammar school, then, this clergyman, such as that at Marketville Lee, said Mr. Diang. 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 him, you know. Ah, and get his education done the sooner. They can't learn much at a time when there's so many of them, said Uncle Poole, feeling that he was getting quite an insight into this difficult matter. That he'll want the more pay, I doubt, said Mr. Gleed. Aye, aye, 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 education, and it'll be much capital to him. Aye, there's something in that, said Mr. Gleed. Well, well, no, but 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 as that have got no learning, had better keep our money, aye, no, but pull it. Mr. Gleed rubbed his knees and looked very pleasant. Mr. Gleed, I wonder, at you, said he's white. It's very unbecoming in a man of your age and belongings. What's unbecoming, Mrs. G? said Mr. Gleed, winking pleasantly at the company. My new blue coat, as I've got on. I pity your weakness, Mr. Gleed. 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 nettle, you'd need to 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've come to think of it. Somebody said Wacom 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. Gleed might see he didn't mind her. If Wacom thinks that sending his son to a clergyman, depend on it, I shall make no mistake I sending Tom to one. Wacom's as big a scoundrel as old Harry ever may, that he knows the length of every man's foot he's got to deal with. Aye, aye, tell me who's Wacom's butcher, and I'll tell you where to get your meat. But lawyer Wacom's son got a humpback, said Mrs. Pooitt, who felt as if the whole business had a cune real aspect. It's more natural to send him to a clergyman. Yes, said Mr. Gleed, interpreting Mrs. Pooitt's observation with Erin's plausibility. You must consider that, no, but Tulliver. Wacom's son isn't likely to follow any business. Wacom will make a gentleman of him poor fellow. Mr. Gleed, said Mrs. G, in a tone which implied that her indignation would fizz and ooze a little, though she was determined to keep a cork up. You'd far better off, hold your tongue. Mr. Tulliver doesn't want to know your opinion, nor mine either. There's folks in the world as no 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. Gleed, 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. Gleed. There's folks I've lent money to. As perhaps I shall repent, lending money to Kin. Come, come, come, said Mr. Gleed, 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 percent, kin or no kin. Sister, said Mrs. Tulliver, pleadingly. Drink your wine, and let me give you some almonds and raisins. Fessy, I'm sorry for you, said Mrs. Gleed, very much with the feeling of a cure that seizes the opportunity of diverting you far toward the man who carries no stick. It's poor work talking of almonds and raisins. Los, sister Gleed, don't be so quarrelsome, said Mrs. Tulliver, 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 of mourning. All of us, and all we gowns, crapped a life, and just put by, it's very bad among sisters. I should think it is bad, said Mrs. Gleed. Things have come to a fine past where one sister invites the other to her house a purpose to quarrel with her and abuse her. Softly, softly, Jane, be reasonable, be reasonable, said Mr. Gleed. 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 them forever. I should never want to quarrel with any woman if she kept her place. My place indeed, said Mrs. Gleed, getting rather more shrill. There's your betters, Mr. Tulliver, as are dead and in their grave, treated me with a different sort of respect to what you do. Though I've got a husband, as of sit by and see me abused by them, as you'd never have had chance if there hadn't been them in our family as married worse than they might have done. If you talk of 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. Gleed, rising from her chair, I don't know whether you think it's a fine thing to sit by and hear me squire, Mr. Gleed, but I'm not going to stay a minute longer in this house. You can stay behind and come home with the geek, and I'll walk home. Dear heart, dear heart, said Mr. Gleed, 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 dabbed 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 Puller, said Mrs. Tulliver, helplessly, do you think it'd be any use for you to go after her and try to pacify her? Better not, better not, said Mr. Deanne. You'll make it up another day. Then, sisters, shall we go and look at the children? said Mrs. Tulliver, drawing her eyes. No proposition could have been more seasonable. Mr. Tulliver felt very much as if the air had been cleared of the true supplies now the women were out of the room. There were a few things he liked better than a chat with Mr. Deanne, whose close application to business allowed the pleasure very rarely. Mr. Deanne, 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 life on his character, and speak slidingly of his conduct at the Battle of Waterloo, which he would never have won if there hadn't been a great many Englishman at his back, not to speak of Blutcher 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. Deanne remarked 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 dantic fear, inclining him to form rather a low view, a 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. Deanne, 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 at the imports, especially in hides and spellcar, which served 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 Poole 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. End of book one, chapter seven. Book one, chapter eight of The Mail on the Floss. This is a Liberox recording. All Liberox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Liberox.org. Recording by Daisy 55. The Mail on the Floss by George Elliott. Book one, chapter eight of The Boy and the Girl. Mr. Tulliver shows his weaker side. Suppose Sister Clegg should call her money in. It'll 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 plaintiff review of the day. Mr. 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 lines are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way. As a patriarchal goldfish apparently retains to the last its useful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass. Ms. Tulliver was an admirable fish of this kind, and after running her head against the same resistant medium for thirteen years would go at it again today with undull electricity. This observation of hers tended directly to convince Mr. Tulliver that it would not be at all awkward for him to raise five hundred pounds. And when Mrs. Tulliver became rather pressing to know how he would raise it without mortgaging the mail and the house which he said he never would mortgage since nowadays people were none so ready to lend money without security. Mr. Tulliver, getting warm, declared that Mrs. Clay might not do as she liked before calling in her money. She should pay it in whether or not. He was not going to be beholden to his wife's sister. When a man had married into a family where there was a whole little woman he might have plenty to put up with if he chose. 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 for her sister who let tomorrow when she was to take the children to govern first to tea. Not that she looked forward to any distinct issue from that talk, but it seemed impossible 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 was thinking of a visit he should pay on the morrow, and his ideals on a subject were not as so vague and soothing in kindness those of his amenable partner. Mr. Tulliver, when under the influence of a strong feeling, had a promptitude in action that seemed inconsistent with that painful sense of the complicated, puzzling nature of human affairs under which his more dispassionate deliberations were conducted. But it is really not improbable that there was a direct relationship between these apparently contradictory phenomena. Since I have observed that forgetting a strong impression that a skin is tangled, there was nothing like snatching hastily at a single thread, it was owned to this promptitude that Mr. Tulliver was on a horseback soon after dinner the next day. He was not despetic, and on his way to Bassett to see his sister Moss and her husband. For having made up his mind irrequivably that he would pay Mrs. Clegg 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 the said brother-in-law could manage to pay in the money within a given time, it would go far to lessen the felitious air of inconvenience which Mr. Tulliver's fear to step might have worn in the eyes of weak people who require to know precisely how a thing is to be done before they are strongly confident that it will be easy. For Mr. Tulliver was in a position neither new nor striking, but, like other everyday things, should have a cumulative effect that will be felt in the long run. He was held to be a much more substantial man than he really was, and as we are all apt to believe that the world believes in us, it was his habit to think of failure and run with the same sort of remote piety with which a spare long-naked man hears that his plethoric short-naked neighbor is stricken with epilepsy. He had been always used to hear pleasant jokes about his advantages as a man who worked his own meal and on a pretty bitter land, and these jokes naturally kept up his sense that he was a man of considerable substance. They gave a pleasant flavor to his glass on a market day, and if it had not been for the recurrence of half-ealing payments, Mr. Tulliver would really have forgotten that there was a mortgage of two thousand pounds on his very desirable freehold. That was not altogether his own fault, since one of the thousand pounds was his sister's fortune, which he had to pay on her marriage, and a man who has neighbors that will go too long with him is not likely to pay off his mortgages, especially if he 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 nature of fighting about him, and did not like to give harsh refusals even to his sister who had not only come into the world in that superfluous way characteristics of sisters, creating a necessity for mortgages, but had quite thrown herself away in marriage and had crowned her mistakes by having an eighth baby. On this point, Mr. Tulliver was conscious of being a little weak, but he apologized himself by saying that Paul Gritty had been a good-looking wench before she married Moss. He would sometimes say this even with a slight tremendous list 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 bastard lanes with their deep ruts lying so far away from a market town that the labor of drawn 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 with our capital, who, if moraine and blight was abroad, was sure to have his share of them, and who, the more you try to help him out of the mud, would sink the further in. It would do him good rather than harm now if he were obliged to raise this 300 pounds. It would make him look about him better and not act so foolishly about his war this year as he did the last. In fact, Mr. Tulliver had been too easy with his brother-in-law, and because he had let the inches run on for two years, Moss was likely enough to think that he would never be troubled about the principal. But Mr. Tulliver was determined not to encourage such shuffling people any longer, and a ride along the bastard lanes were not likely to innovate a man's resolution by softening his temper. The deep trodden hoof-marks made in the muddiest winters of days 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 eyes, though they made no part of his brother's Moss farm, strongly contributed to his dissatisfaction that unlucky agriculturalist. If this wasn't Moss's follow, it might have been. Bassett was all alike. It was a beggarly parish, in Mr. Tulliver's opinion, and his opinion was certainly not groundless. Bassett had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor non-resident landlord, a poor non-resident vicar, and rather less than half a curate, also poor. If anyone strongly impressed with the power of the human mind to be troubled with circumstances will contend that the parishness of Bassett might nevertheless have been a very superior class of people. I have nothing to urge against that abstract proposition. I only know that, in point of fact, the Bassett mind was in strict keeping with its circumstances. The muddy lanes, green, or clay, 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 Bassett which they led more frequently to a center of dissipation, spoken informally as the Marcus O'Gramby, but among intimates as Dickinson, a large, low room with a sandy floor, a cold scent of tobacco, modified by undetected bearded rags. Mr. Dickinson leaned against the doorpost with melancholy temple face, looking as irreverent to the daylight as a last night's guttered candle. All this may not seem a very seductive form of temptation, but the majority of men and Bassett found it falsely alluring when encountered on their road toward four o'clock on a wintry afternoon. And if any wife and Bassett wished to indicate that our husband was not a pleasure-seeking man, she could hardly do it more emphatically than by saying that he didn't spend a shilling at Dickinson from one witsonside to another. Miss Moss had said that of her husband more than once, when her brother was in a mood to find fault with him as he certainly was today. Another could be less pacified to Mr. Tulliver than the behavior of the farm yard gate, which he no sooner attempted to push open with his right and stick than it acted as a gate without the upper hinge unknown to do, to the pearl 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-temper buildings, but up to the long line of tumble-down-dwelling houses standing on a raised causeway. But the tomly appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he had determined on, namely, not to get down from his horse doing 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. Ms. Moss heard the sound of the horse's feet, and when a brother rolled up, was already outside the kitchen door with a half-weary smile on her face and a black-eyed baby in her arms, Ms. Moss's face bore a faded resemblance to her brother's baby little fat hand. Pressed against her cheek, seemed to show more strikingly that the cheek was faded. Brother, I am glad to see you, she said, in an affectionate tone. I didn't look for you today. How do you do? Oh, pretty well, Ms. 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 mood. He never called her, Ms. 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. Ms. 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 a house, I suppose, said, added Mr. Tulliver after a grave pause, doing which four children had run out, like chickens whose mother had been suddenly in eclipse behind a hen coop. No, said Ms. Moss, but he's only in the potato field yonder's. Georgie, run to the far close in a minute and tell fathers your uncles come. You'll get down, brother, won't you, and take something? No, no, I can't get down. I must be going home again directly, said Mr. Tulliver, looking at the distance. In house, Ms. Tulliver and the children, said Ms. Moss, humbly not daring to press her invitation. Oh, pretty well, Tom's going to a new school in mid-summer, a deal of expense to me. It's bad work for me, lying out all my money. I wish you'd be so good as let the children come and see their cousins someday. My little eons want to see their cousin Maggie so as never was. And me, her godmother, and so fond of her, there's nobody who would make a bigger fuss about 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 Ms. 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 perpetrate her brother than his praise of Maggie. He seldom found any one volunteer in praise of the little winch. It was usually left entirely to himself to insist on her merits. But Maggie always appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt's moss. It was her astastia where she was out of the reach of law. If she upset anything, dirty her shoes, or tore her frock, these things were matters, of course, at her aunt's moss. In spite of himself, Mr. Toliver's eyes got milder, and he did not look away from his sister as he said, hey, she's fond of you then, oh, the other aunts. I think she takes after her family, not the bidder for mothers in her. Moss says she's just like what I used to be, said Mrs. Moss, though I was never so quick and fond of the books. But I think Lizzie's like her. She's sharp. Come in, Lizzie, my dear, and let your uncle see you. He hardly knows you. You grow so fast. Lizzie, 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 Dokulet Mill. She was inferior enough to Maggie in fire and strength of expression to make the resemblance between the two entirely frattering to Mr. Toliver's fatherly love. Hey, they're a bit alike, he said, looking kindly at the little figure in the sore pinafore. They both take after our mother. You've got enough for girls, gritty, he added, in a tone half-compassionate, half-reportful. For them, bless him, said Mrs. Malfoy for size, stroking Lizzie's hair on each side of her face, admitting as there's boys they've got a brother of peace. Hey, but they must turn out and fend for themselves, said Mr. Moth, feeling that his severity was relaxing and trying to brace it by throwing out a wholesome hint. They mustn't look too hanging on their brothers. No, I hope their brothers are loved the poor things, and remember they came all one father and mother. The lads will never be the poor for that, said Mrs. Moth, flashing out with heritimity, like a half-smothered fired. Mr. Tulliver gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked it, and said angrily, Stand still with ya! Much to the astonishment of that innocent animal. And the more there is of them, the more they must love one another, Miss Moth went on, looking at her children with didotic purpose. But she turned toward her brother, again to say, No, but what I hope your boy'll always be good to his sister, though there is but two of them like you and me, brother. The arrow went straight to Mr. Tulliver's heart. He had not a rapid imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very near to him, and he was not long in seeing his relationship to his own sister side by side with Tom's relations to Maggie. Would the little winch ever be poorly off, and Tom rather hard upon her? Hey, hey, gritty, said the miller with a new softness in his tongue. But I've always done what I could for you, he added, as if vindicated himself from a reproach. I'm not denying that, brother, and I'm always ungrateful. And I'm not always ungrateful, said the poor Mrs. Moth, too fraggled by toll and children to have strength left for in pride. But here's the father, what a while you've been Moth. Wow, do you call it, said Mr. Moth, feeling out of breath and injure. I've been running all the way, won't you light, Mr. Tulliver? Well, I'll just get down and have a beetle talk with you in the garden, said Mr. Tulliver, thinking that he should be more likely to show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present. He got down and passed of Mr. Moth into the garden, toward an old yew-tree arbor, while his sister stood, tapping her baby on the back, and looking wistfully after them. Their inches into the yew-tree arbor surprised several fowls that were recreated themselves by scratching deep holes in the dusty ground, and at once took slight with much parter and crackling. Mr. Tulliver sat down on a bench, and tapping the ground curiously, he and there with a stick, as if he suspected some hollowness. Opened a conversation by observing, was something like a snarl in his tone. Why, you've got wheat again in that corner, close. I see a never a bit of dressing on it. You'll do no good with it this year. Mr. Moth, who, when he married Mrs. Tulliver, had been regarded as the bucket of basset, now wore a beard nearly a week old, and had a depressed, unexpected air of machine-horse. He answered in a patient, grumbling tone, Why, poor farmers like me must do as they can. They must leave it to them as have got money to play with, to put half as much into ground as they mean to get it out. 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 and money. I know I'm behind with the interest, said Mr. Moth, but I was so unlucky with the war last year, and what with the Mrs. being laid up so, things have gone awkward, nor unusual. Hey, snob, Mr. Carr, there's folks as things all always go awkward with empty sacks you'll never stand upright. Well, I don't know what fault you've got to find with me, Mr. Tulliver, said Mr. Moth, deprecatingly. I know that isn't a day labor works harder. What's the use of that, said Mr. Tulliver sharply, when a man marries and gots no cover to work as far, but his wife bit of fortune. I was against it from the first. But you neither of you listen to me, and I can't lie out or my money any longer, for I've got to pay five hundred equipment, Ms. Clary, and there's to be time and expense to me. I should find myself short, even saying I got back all as is my own. You must look about and see how you can pay me with the three hundred pounds. Well, if that's what you mean, said Mr. Moth, looking blankly before him, you've got to be sewed up and are done with it. I must part with me every ear of stock I've got to pay you and the landlord, too. 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 has succeeded in getting quite as much irritable of Mr. Moth as he had desired, and he was able to say angrily, rising from his seat, well, you must do as you can. I 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 or my money any longer. You must raise it as quick as you can. Mr. Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbor as he uttered the last sentence, and with I looking around at Mr. Moth went on to the kitchen door where the elder's boy was holding his horse, and his sister was waiting in a state of wandering 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. Miss Moth had eight children, but could never overcome a regret that the twins had not lived. Mr. Moth thought their removal was not without its consolation. Won't you come in, brother? She said, looking anxiously at her husband, who was walking slowly up while Mr. Tulliver had his foot already in the stirrups. No, no, goodbye, he said, turning his horse head and riding away. No man could feel more resolute till he got outside the yard gate and a little way along the deep, ruddy 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 his stand still in the same spot for two or three minutes, dorm which he's turned his head from side to side in a melancholy way, as if he were looking 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 then to the climax of feeling which had determined this movement by saying out loud as he struck his horse, poor little winch. She'll have nobody but Tom, be like when I'm gone. Mr. Tulliver's return into the yard was described by several young masses, who immediately ran in with exciting news to their mother, so that Miss Moss was again on the doorstep when her brother rode up. She had been crying, but there was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and made no ostinacious 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 nose, 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 ever in contriving as you can. Miss Moss tears came again at this unexpected kindness, and she could say nothing. Come, come. The little winch shall come and see you. I'll bring her in Tom some day before he goes to school. You mustn't fret. I'll always be a good brother to you. Thank you for that word, brother, said Mrs. Moss, drying her tears, then turning to Lizzie. She said, Run now and fetch the colored egg for cousin Maggie. Lizzie ran in and quickly reappeared with a small paper parcel. It's broad hard, brother, and colored with thrums. Very pretty. It was done on purpose for Maggie. Were you pleased to carry it in your pocket? Hey, hey, said Mr. Tulliver, putting it carefully in his side pocket. Goodbye. And so the respectable miller returned along the basset lanes, rather more puzzled than before, as to the 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 apart, for simple people like our friend Mr. Tulliver are apt to clothe unpeachable feelings in an erroneous ideals. And this was his confused way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for the little winch had given him a new sensibility toward his sister. End of book one, chapter eight. Recording by Daisy Fifty-Five. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliott