prompt:
Chapter: The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming

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

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

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Tulliver, "ask her to come. I never hardly get a
bit o' talk with Deane now; we haven't had him this six months. What's
it matter what she says? My children need be beholding to nobody."

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

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

"I don't know what she won't get 'em to do," said Mrs. Tulliver, "for
my children are so awk'ard wi' their aunts and uncles. Maggie's ten
times naughtier when they come than she is other days, and Tom doesn't
like 'em, bless him!--though it's more nat'ral in a boy than a gell.
And there's Lucy Dean's such a good child,--you may set her on a
stool, and there she'll sit for an hour together, and never offer to
get off. I can't help loving the child as if she was my own; and I'm
sure she's more like _my_ child than sister Deane's, for she'd allays
a very poor color for one of our family, sister Deane had."

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

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

"Well, well, do as you like, Bessy," said Mr. Tulliver, taking up his
hat and walking out to the mill. Few wives were more submissive than
Mrs. Tulliver on all points unconnected with her family relations; but
she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable
family indeed,--as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or
the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up
their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had
married so well,--not at an early age, for that was not the practice
of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything
in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the
cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries;
so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the
privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a
Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the
Dodson family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves
never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and
there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was
in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate
member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the
most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the
illness or trouble was the sufferer's own fault, it was not in the
practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short,
there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right
thing in household management and social demeanor, and the only bitter
circumstance attending this superiority was a painful inability to
approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the
Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in "strange houses," always
ate dry bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having
no confidence in the butter, and thinking that the preserves had
probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There
were some Dodsons less like the family than others, that was admitted;
but in so far as they were "kin," they were of necessity better than
those who were "no kin." And it is remarkable that while no individual
Dodson was satisfied with any other individual Dodson, each was
satisfied, not only with him or her self, but with the Dodsons
collectively. The feeblest member of a family--the one who has the
least character--is often the merest epitome of the family habits and
traditions; and Mrs. Tulliver was a thorough Dodson, though a mild
one, as small-beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as
very weak ale: and though she had groaned a little in her youth under
the yoke of her elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at
their sisterly reproaches, it was not in Mrs. Tulliver to be an
innovator on the family ideas. She was thankful to have been a Dodson,
and to have one child who took after her own family, at least in his
features and complexion, in liking salt and in eating beans, which a
Tulliver never did.

In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Tom, and he was
as far from appreciating his "kin" on the mother's side as Maggie
herself, generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the
most portable food, when he received timely warning that his aunts and
uncles were coming,--a moral symptom from which his aunt Glegg deduced
the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard on Maggie that
Tom always absconded without letting her into the secret, but the
weaker sex are acknowledged to be serious _impedimenta_ in cases of
flight.

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

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

"No," said Tom, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eying
the third, which was to be divided between them,--"no, I sha'n't."

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

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

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

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

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

"Shut your eyes, Maggie."

"What for?"

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

Maggie obeyed.

"Now, which'll you have, Maggie,--right hand or left?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, please, Tom, have it; I don't mind--I like the other; please take
this."

"No, I sha'n't," said Tom, almost crossly, beginning on his own
inferior piece.

Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate
up her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Tom
had finished first, and had to look on while Maggie ate her last
morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Maggie didn't
know Tom was looking at her; she was seesawing on the elder-bough,
lost to almost everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.

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

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

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

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

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

With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough, and threw
a stone with a "hoigh!" as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also
been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his
ears and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet
the excellent dog accepted Tom's attention with as much alacrity as if
he had been treated quite generously.

But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery which
distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from
the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave
herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have
given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some
of it for Tom. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Maggie's
palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many
times over, sooner than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with
her. And he had said he wouldn't have it, and she ate it without
thinking; how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that
Maggie saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes; but by that
time resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation, and
she jumped from her bough to look for Tom. He was no longer in the
paddock behind the rickyard; where was he likely to be gone, and Yap
with him? Maggie ran to the high bank against the great holly-tree,
where she could see far away toward the Floss. There was Tom; but her
heart sank again as she saw how far off he was on his way to the great
river, and that he had another companion besides Yap,--naughty Bob
Jakin, whose official, if not natural, function of frightening the
birds was just now at a standstill. Maggie felt sure that Bob was
wicked, without very distinctly knowing why; unless it was because
Bob's mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, who lived at a queer
round house down the river; and once, when Maggie and Tom had wandered
thither, there rushed out a brindled dog that wouldn't stop barking;
and when Bob's mother came out after it, and screamed above the
barking to tell them not to be frightened, Maggie thought she was
scolding them fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Maggie thought
it very likely that the round house had snakes on the floor, and bats
in the bedroom; for she had seen Bob take off his cap to show Tom a
little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of
young bats: altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even
slightly diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats;
and to crown all, when Tom had Bob for a companion, he didn't mind
about Maggie, and would never let her go with him.

It must be owned that Tom was fond of Bob's company. How could it be
otherwise? Bob knew, directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a
swallow's, or a tomtit's, or a yellow-hammer's; he found out all the
wasps' nests, and could set all sort of traps; he could climb the
trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting
hedgehogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were rather
naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after
the sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering _incognito_.

Such qualities in an inferior, who could always be treated with
authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a
fatal fascination for Tom; and every holiday-time Maggie was sure to
have days of grief because he had gone off with Bob.

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

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

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

"I know the chap as owns the ferrets," said Bob, in a hoarse treble
voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river,
like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in. "He
lives up the Kennel Yard at Sut Ogg's, he does. He's the biggest
rot-catcher anywhere, he is. I'd sooner, be a rot-catcher nor
anything, I would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors! you mun
ha' ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, there's that dog, now!" Bob
continued, pointing with an air of disgust toward Yap, "he's no more
good wi' a rot nor nothin'. I see it myself, I did, at the
rot-catchin' i' your feyther's barn."

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

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

"Hev ferrets, Measter Tom," said Bob, eagerly,--"them white ferrets
wi' pink eyes; Lors, you might catch your own rots, an' you might put
a rot in a cage wi' a ferret, an' see 'em fight, you might. That's
what I'd do, I know, an' it 'ud be better fun a'most nor seein' two
chaps fight,--if it wasn't them chaps as sold cakes an' oranges at the
Fair, as the things flew out o' their baskets, an' some o' the cakes
was smashed--But they tasted just as good," added Bob, by way of note
or addendum, after a moment's pause.

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

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

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

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

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

"Ugh! you coward!" said Tom, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated
as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Bob abstained
from remark and passed on, choosing, however, to walk in the shallow
edge of the overflowing river by way of change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, I can."

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

"No, you can't."

"I'm master."

"I don't care for you."

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

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

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

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

But at this moment Yap, who had been running on before, returned
barking to the scene of action, and saw a favorable opportunity for
biting Bob's bare leg not only with inpunity but with honor. The pain
from Yap's teeth, instead of surprising Bob into a relaxation of his
hold, gave it a fiercer tenacity, and with a new exertion of his force
he pushed Tom backward and got uppermost. But now Yap, who could get
no sufficient purchase before, set his teeth in a new place, so that
Bob, harassed in this way, let go his hold of Tom, and, almost
throttling Yap, flung him into the river. By this time Tom was up
again, and before Bob had quite recovered his balance after the act of
swinging Yap, Tom fell upon him, threw him down, and got his knees
firmly on Bob's chest.

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

"Take it," said Bob, sulkily.

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

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

Tom loosed his hold, and left Bob to rise.

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

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

Tom walked on without looking around, and Yap followed his example,
the cold bath having moderated his passions.

"Go along wi' you, then, wi' your drowned dog; I wouldn't own such a
dog--_I_ wouldn't," said Bob, getting louder, in a last effort to
sustain his defiance. But Tom was not to be provoked into turning
round, and Bob's voice began to falter a little as he said,--

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

He stood still till Tom had passed through the gate and disappeared
behind the hedge. The knife would do not good on the ground there; it
wouldn't vex Tom; and pride or resentment was a feeble passion in
Bob's mind compared with the love of a pocket-knife. His very fingers
sent entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar
rough buck's-horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere
affection, as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades,
and they had just been sharpened! What is life without a pocket-knife
to him who has once tasted a higher existence? No; to throw the handle
after the hatchet is a comprehensible act of desperation, but to throw
one's pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in every
sense a hyperbole, or throwing beyond the mark. So Bob shuffled back
to the spot where the beloved knife lay in the dirt, and felt quite a
new pleasure in clutching it again after the temporary separation, in
opening one blade after the other, and feeling their edge with his
well-hardened thumb. Poor Bob! he was not sensitive on the point of
honor, not a chivalrous character. That fine moral aroma would not
have been thought much of by the public opinion of Kennel Yard, which
was the very focus or heart of Bob's world, even if it could have made
itself perceptible there; yet, for all that, he was not utterly a
sneak and a thief as our friend Tom had hastily decided.

But Tom, you perceive, was rather a Rhadamanthine personage, having
more than the usual share of boy's justice in him,--the justice that
desires to hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be hurt, and is
troubled with no doubts concerning the exact amount of their deserts.
Maggie saw a cloud on his brow when he came home, which checked her
joy at his coming so much sooner than she had expected, and she dared
hardly speak to him as he stood silently throwing the small
gravel-stones into the mill-dam. It is not pleasant to give up a
rat-catching when you have set your mind on it. But if Tom had told
his strongest feeling at that moment, he would have said, "I'd do just
the same again." That was his usual mode of viewing his past actions;
whereas Maggie was always wishing she had done something different.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Mrs. Tulliver is running around, anxiously preparing for an upcoming visit by her sisters and her brothers-in-law. The narrator tells us that Mrs. Tulliver used to be Miss Dodson. The Dodsons are an impressive family with lots of strict rules about how to behave. Basically, the Dodsons think they are the best family ever, and everyone else can just stuff it. Tom may look like the Dodsons, but he isn't their biggest fan. He usually runs away when his aunts and uncles come to visit, leaving Maggie to deal with them by herself. The day before the invasion, or visit, Tom and Maggie are sitting outside with a pastry they stole from the kitchen. Nice work kids. Tom divides the pastry in half and tells Maggie to closer her eyes and pick a half. Maggie ends up with the better half and Tom is mad. Maggie feels guilty. Tom runs off with his dog and meets up with Bob Jakin. Maggie doesn't like Bob since his mom scared her one time and since Tom ignores Maggie when Bob is around. Maggie goes off to sulk and Tom and Bob go off to look at some rats. The boys try to get Yap the dog to catch a rat, but he fails miserably. Tom kicks his dog. These Tulliver kids really aren't very nice to animals. The boys start discussing the river Floss and floods. They talk about building an arc if it floods. Now they play a coin toss game, but Tom insists that Bob cheated. They get into a fight. Tom says that he won't hang out with Bob anymore since Bob is a cheater. Bob is upset and throws his pocket knife after Tom. But Bob really loves his knife, so he goes back to pick it up, rather ruining his dramatic gesture. The narrator tells us that Tom never regrets his past actions, while Maggie obsesses over her past actions.


prompt:
Chapter: Enter the Aunts and Uncles

The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. Glegg was not
the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs. Tulliver's
arm-chair, no impartial observer could have denied that for a woman of
fifty she had a very comely face and figure, though Tom and Maggie
considered their aunt Glegg as the type of ugliness. It is true she
despised the advantages of costume, for though, as she often observed,
no woman had better clothes, it was not her way to wear her new things
out before her old ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their
best thread-lace in every wash; but when Mrs. Glegg died, it would be
found that she had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer of her
wardrobe in the Spotted Chamber than ever Mrs. Wooll of St. Ogg's had
bought in her life, although Mrs. Wooll wore her lace before it was
paid for. So of her curled fronts: Mrs. Glegg had doubtless the
glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in
various degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the week-day
world from under a crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most
dreamlike and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular.
Occasionally, indeed, Mrs. Glegg wore one of her third-best fronts on
a week-day visit, but not at a sister's house; especially not at Mrs.
Tulliver's, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sister's feelings
greatly by wearing her own hair, though, as Mrs. Glegg observed to
Mrs. Deane, a mother of a family, like Bessy, with a husband always
going to law, might have been expected to know better. But Bessy was
always weak!

So if Mrs. Glegg's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she
had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting
allusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blond curls, separated from
each other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting.
Mrs. Tulliver had shed tears several times at sister Glegg's
unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the
consciousness of looking the handsomer for them naturally administered
support. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her bonnet in the house
to-day,--untied and tilted slightly, of course--a frequent practice of
hers when she was on a visit, and happened to be in a severe humor:
she didn't know what draughts there might be in strange houses. For
the same reason she wore a small sable tippet, which reached just to
her shoulders, and was very far from meeting across her well-formed
chest, while her long neck was protected by a _chevaux-de-frise_ of
miscellaneous frilling. One would need to be learned in the fashions
of those times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Glegg's
slate-colored silk gown must have been; but from certain
constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor about
it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it
belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come
recently into wear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?" said Mrs. Glegg,
rather sharply, as they shook hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well done, Lucy! Let her stay, Mrs. Deane, let her stay," said Mr.
Deane, a large but alert-looking man, with a type of _physique_ to be
seen in all ranks of English society,--bald crown, red whiskers, full
forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see noblemen
like Mr. Deane, and you may see grocers or day-laborers like him; but
the keenness of his brown eyes was less common than his contour.

He held a silver snuff-box very tightly in his hand, and now and then
exchanged a pinch with Mr. Tulliver, whose box was only
silver-mounted, so that it was naturally a joke between them that Mr.
Tulliver wanted to exchange snuff-boxes also. Mr. Deane's box had been
given him by the superior partners in the firm to which he belonged,
at the same time that they gave him a share in the business, in
acknowledgment of his valuable services as manager. No man was thought
more highly of in St. Ogg's than Mr. Deane; and some persons were even
of opinion that Miss Susan Dodson, who was once held to have made the
worst match of all the Dodson sisters, might one day ride in a better
carriage, and live in a better house, even than her sister Pullet.
There was no knowing where a man would stop, who had got his foot into
a great mill-owning, shipowning business like that of Guest & Co.,
with a banking concern attached. And Mrs. Deane, as her intimate
female friends observed, was proud and "having" enough; _she_ wouldn't
let her husband stand still in the world for want of spurring.

"Maggie," said Mrs. Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her, and whispering
in her ear, as soon as this point of Lucy's staying was settled, "go
and get your hair brushed, do, for shame. I told you not to come in
without going to Martha first, you know I did."

"Tom come out with me," whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she
passed him; and Tom followed willingly enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Very well," said Tom, going away. But he turned again at the door and
said, "But you'd better come, you know. There's the dessert,--nuts,
you know, and cowslip wine."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ay, there's something in that," said Mr. Glegg. "Well well, neighbor
Tulliver, you may be right, you may be right:

  'When land is gone and money's spent,
  Then learning is most excellent.'

"I remember seeing those two lines wrote on a window at Buxton. But us
that have got no learning had better keep our money, eh, neighbor
Pullet?" Mr. Glegg rubbed his knees, and looked very pleasant.

"Mr. Glegg, I wonder _at_ you," said his wife. "It's very unbecoming
in a man o' your age and belongings."

"What's unbecoming, Mrs. G.?" said Mr. Glegg, winking pleasantly at
the company. "My new blue coat as I've got on?"

"I pity your weakness, Mr. Glegg. I say it's unbecoming to be making a
joke when you see your own kin going headlongs to ruin."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, _I_ say nothing," said Mrs. Glegg, sarcastically. "My advice has
never been asked, and I don't give it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Gleggs are the first to arrive at the Tullivers, which is bad for Tom and Maggie since they can't stand Aunt Glegg. Aunt Glegg is old, old-fashioned, and judgmental. Mrs. Glegg complains about her other sisters to Mrs. Tulliver, and then criticizes what time dinner is served in the Tulliver house. She then proceeds to criticize Mr. Tulliver for getting involved in lawsuits. The Pullets arrive to end Mrs. Glegg's spiel. Mrs. Pullet enters crying. Turns out a her neighbor died yesterday. Aunt Glegg tells Aunt Pullet to pull herself together and to stop crying over some random person who isn't even a Dodson Mrs. Pullet rambles about her neighbor and doctors, while Mr. Pullet makes the occasional observation and is generally confused. Mrs. Pullet and Mrs. Tulliver go upstairs together and gossip about Mrs. Glegg. Such a nice family. We also learn that the aunts often give Maggie old clothes that she stubbornly refuses to wear, much to Mrs. Tulliver's shame. The last sister, Mrs. Deane, arrives with her daughter Lucy. Tom and Maggie run to greet Lucy and Aunt Glegg complains that they aren't paying attention to her. Aunt Glegg and Aunt Pullet talk very loudly to the kid, scold Maggie for looking the way she does, and gripe about Maggie's hair. Mr. Tulliver defends Maggie and his share of Maggie's genetic makeup, which resulted in her unfortunate hair. Lucy is invited to stay over a while with her cousins and she agrees. Mr. Deane approves of this plan. We learn that Mr. Deane is a successful businessman with lots of money. He is not in the sausage business like his long-lost relative Jimmy, however. Maggie and Tom run upstairs before dinner. Maggie is sick of everyone complaining about her hair, so she decides to cut it off. Tom helps enthusiastically and, when they are done, Maggie looks pretty awful. Maggie is now really upset and refuses to come downstairs. Tom says whatever, and goes off to eat dinner. Maggie thinks that her life is pretty much over and the narrator tells us that Maggie will remember her traumatic haircut fiasco for the rest of her life. The maid, Kezia, comes to get Maggie, but Maggie refuses to come downstairs. Tom comes back to tell her to come downstairs and she still refuses. Finally, Maggie gets hungry and decides food is more important than looking dumb and getting in trouble. She tries to sneak in, but her mom sees her and screams in horror. All the aunts and uncles scold Maggie. Her dad comforts her though. After the hubbub dies down, Mr. Tulliver once again brings up his plan to send Tom to study with Mr. Stelling. The aunts and uncles are confused by this plan. Mrs. Glegg says it's not a good idea to give Tom too good of an education, since it won't fit his social class. Mr. Tulliver and Mrs. Glegg get into it - Mrs. Glegg is mad that Mr. Tulliver won't listen to her advice and Mr. Tulliver tells Mrs. Glegg to butt out of his business. The dinner degenerates into a big fight, and the Gleggs storm out. Well, Mrs. Glegg storms out and Mr. Glegg runs after her. The other aunts and uncles stay and the men discuss politics.