The Mill on the Floss Read Free Page B

steadfastly at his companion.
    "Ah!" said Mr. Riley, in a tone of mild interest. He was a man
with heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly
the same under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and
the habit of taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made
him trebly oracular to Mr. Tulliver.
    "It's a very particular thing," he went on; "it's about my boy
Tom."
    At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was seated on a low stool
close by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her
heavy hair back and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that
roused Maggie when she was dreaming over her book, but Tom's name
served as well as the shrillest whistle; in an instant she was on
the watch, with gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting
mischief, or at all events determined to fly at any one who
threatened it toward Tom.
    "You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsummer," said
Mr. Tulliver; "he's comin' away from the 'cademy at Lady-day, an' I
shall let him run loose for a quarter; but after that I want to
send him to a downright good school, where they'll make a scholard
of him."
    "Well," said Mr. Riley, "there's no greater advantage you can
give him than a good education. Not," he added, with polite
significance,–"not that a man can't be an excellent miller and
farmer, and a shrewd, sensible fellow into the bargain, without
much help from the schoolmaster."
    "I believe you," said Mr. Tulliver, winking, and turning his
head on one side; "but that's where it is. I don't
mean
Tom to be a miller and farmer. I see no fun i' that. Why, if I made
him a miller an' farmer, he'd be expectin' to take to the mill an'
the land, an' a-hinting at me as it was time for me to lay by an'
think o' my latter end. Nay, nay, I've seen enough o' that wi'
sons. I'll never pull my coat off before I go to bed. I shall give
Tom an eddication an' put him to a business, as he may make a nest
for himself, an' not want to push me out o' mine. Pretty well if he
gets it when I'm dead an' gone. I sha'n't be put off wi' spoon-meat
afore I've lost my teeth."
    This was evidently a point on which Mr. Tulliver felt strongly;
and the impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis to
his speech showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes
afterward in a defiant motion of the head from side to side, and an
occasional "Nay, nay," like a subsiding growl.
    These angry symptoms were keenly observed by Maggie, and cut her
to the quick. Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his
father out of doors, and of making the future in some way tragic by
his wickedness. This was not to be borne; and Maggie jumped up from
her stool, forgetting all about her heavy book, which fell with a
bang within the fender, and going up between her father's knees,
said, in a half-crying, half-indignant voice,–
    "Father, Tom wouldn't be naughty to you ever; I know he
wouldn't."
    Mrs. Tulliver was out of the room superintending a choice
supper-dish, and Mr. Tulliver's heart was touched; so Maggie was
not scolded about the book. Mr. Riley quietly picked it up and
looked at it, while the father laughed, with a certain tenderness
in his hard-lined face, and patted his little girl on the back, and
then held her hands and kept her between his knees.
    "What! they mustn't say any harm o' Tom, eh?" said Mr. Tulliver,
looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice,
turning to Mr. Riley, as though Maggie couldn't hear, "She
understands what one's talking about so as never was. And you
should hear her read,–straight off, as if she knowed it all
beforehand. And allays at her book! But it's bad–it's bad," Mr.
Tulliver added sadly, checking this blamable exultation. "A woman's
no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to trouble, I doubt.
But bless you!"–here the exultation was clearly recovering the
mastery,–"she'll read the books and understand 'em better nor half
the folks as are growed up."
    Maggie's