CHAPTER 3
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A Voice from the PastOernoohe chestnuts were ing into flower, Maggie had brought her chair outside the front door and was seated there with a book on her knees. Her dark eyes had wandered from the book, but they did not seem to be enjoying the sunshine which pierced the s of jasmine on the projeg porch at her right and threw leafy shadows on her pale round cheek; they seemed rather to be searg for something that was not disclosed by the sunshi had been a more miserable day than usual: her father, after a visit of Wakems had had a paroxysm e, in which for some trifling fault he had beaten the boy who served in the mill. Once before, since his illness, he had had a similar paroxysm, in which he had beaten his horse, and the se had left a lasting terror in Maggies mind. The thought had risen, that some time or other he might beat her mother if she happeo speak in her feeble way at the wrong moment. The kee of all dread with her was, lest her father should add to his present misfortuhe wretess of doing something irretrievably disgraceful. The battered school-book of Toms which she held on her knees, could give her no fortitude uhe pressure of that dread, and again and again her eyes had filled with tears, as they wandered vaguely, seeiher the chestnut trees nor the distant horizon, but only future ses of home-sorrow. Suddenly she was roused by the sound of the opening gate and of footsteps on the gravel. It was not Tom who was entering, but a man in a sealskin cap and a blue plush waistcoat, carrying a pa his back, and followed closely by a bull-terrier of brindled coat and defiant aspect.
`O Bob, its you! said Maggie, starting up with a smile of pleased reition, for there had been no abundance of kind acts to efface the recolle of Bobs generosity. `Im so glad to see you.
`Thank you, Miss, said Bob, lifting his cap and showing a delighted face, but immediately relieving himself of some apanying embarrassment by looking down at his dog, and saying in a tone of disgust, `Get out wi you, you thunderin sawney!
`My brother is not at home yet, Bob, said Maggie, `he is always at St Oggs in the daytime.
`Well, Miss, said Bob, `I should be glad to see Mr Tom - but that isnt just what Im e for - look here!
Bob was i of depositing his pa the doorstep, and with it a row of small books fasteogether with string. Apparently, however, they were not the object to which he wished to call Maggies attention, but rather something which he had carried under his arm, ed in a red handkerchief.
`See here! he said again, laying the red parcel ohers and unfolding it, `you wont think Im a-makin too free, Miss, I hope, but I lighted on these books, and I thought they might make up to you a bit for them as youve lost; for I heared you speak o picturs - an as for picturs, look here!
The opening of the red handkerchief had disclosed a superannuated `Keepsake and six or seven numbers of a `Portrait Gallery, in royal octavo; and the emphatic request to look referred to a portrait of Gee the Fourth in all the majesty of his depressed ium and voluminous neckcloth.
`Theres all sorts o genelmen here, Bob went on, turning over the leaves with some excitement, `wi all sorts o noses - an some bald an some wi wigs - Parlament genelmen, I re. An here, he added, opening the `Keepsake, `heres ladies for you, some wi curly hair and some wismooth, an some a-smiling wi their heads o one side ansome as if they was goin to cry - look here - a-sittin on the ground out o door dressed like the ladies In see out othe carriages at the balls in th Old Hall there. My eyes, I wonder what the chaps wear as go a-courtin em! I sot up till the clock was gowelve last night a-lookin at em - I did - till they stared at me out o the picturs as if theyd know when I spoke to em. But, lors! I shouldnt know what to say to em. Theyll be more fittin pany for you, Miss, and the man at the book-stall, he said they banged ivery-things for picturs - he said they was a fust-rate article.
`And youve bought them for me, Bob? said Maggie, deeply touched by this simple kindness. `How very, very good of you! But Im afraid you gave a great deal of money for them.
`Not me! said Bob. `Id ha gev three times the money, if theyll make up to you a bit for them as was sold away from you, Miss. For In niver fot how you looked when you fretted about the books bein gone - its stuck by me as if it ictur hingin before me. An when I seed the book open upo the stall, wi the lady lookin out of it wi eyes a bit life yourn when you was frettin - youll excuse my takin the liberty, Miss - I thought Id make free to buy it for you, an then I bought the books full o geo match - an then - here Bob took up the small stringed packet of books - `I thought you might like a bit more print as well as the picturs, an I got these for a say-so - theyre cram-full o print, an I thought theyd do no harm in along wi these bettermost books. An I hope you wont say me nay, an tell me as you wont have em, like Mr Tom did wi the suvreigns.
`No, indeed, Bob, said Maggie, `Im very thankful to you for thinking of me, and being so good to me and Tom. I dont think any one ever did such a kind thing for me before. I havent many friends who care for me.
`Hev a dog, Miss - theyre better friends nor any Christian, said Bob, laying down his pack again, which he had taken up with the iion of hurrying away; for he felt siderable shyness in talking to a young lass like Maggie, though, as he usually said of himself, `his tongue overrun him when he began to speak. `I t give you Mumps, cause hed break his heart to go away from me - Eh, Mumps, what do you say, you riff-raff? - (Mumps deed to express himself more diffusely than by a single affirmative movement of his tail.) `But Id get you a pup, Miss, an wele.
`No, thank you, Bob. We have a yard dog, and I maynt keep a dog of my own.
`Eh, thats a pity: else theres a pup - if you didnt mind about it not bein thh bred - its mother acts in the Punch show - an unon sensable bitch - she means more sense wi her bark nor half the chaps put into their talk from breakfast to sundown. Theres one chap carries pots, a poor low trade as any on the road - he says, "Why, Tobys nought but a mongrel - theres nought to look at in her." But I says to him, "Why, what are you yoursen but a mohere wasnt much pi o your feyther an mother, to look at you." Not but what I like a bit o breed myself, but I t abide to see one cur grinnin at another. I wish you good evenin, Miss, added Bob, abruptly taking up his pack again, uhe scioushat his tongue was ag in an undisciplined manner.
`Wont you e in the evening some time, and see my brother, Bob? said Maggie.
`Yes, Miss, thank you - aime. Youll give my duty to him, if you please. Eh, hes a fine growed chap, Mr Tom is; he took to growin i the legs, an I didnt.
The pack was down again, now - the hook of the stick having somehow gone wrong.
`You dont call Mumps a cur, I suppose, said Maggie, divining that any i she showed in Mumps would be gratifying to his master.
`No, Miss, a fine way off that, said Bob, with a pitying smile, `Mumps is as fine a cross as youll see anywhere along the Floss, an In been up it wi the barge times enoo. Why, the gentry stops to look at him, but you wont catch Mumps a-looking at the gentry much - he minds his own business - he does.
The expression of Mumpss face, which seemed to be tolerating the superfluous existence of objects in general, was strongly firmatory of this high praise.
`He looks dreadfully surly, said Maggie. `Would he let me pat him?
`Ay, that would he, and thank you. He knows his pany, Mumps does. He isnt a dog as ull be caught wi gingerbread: hed smell a thief a good deal stronger nor the gingerbread - he would. Lors, I talk to him by th hether, when Im walking ilone places, and if In done a bit o mischief - I allays tell him - In got s but what Mumps knows em. He knows about my big thumb, he does.
`Y thumb - whats that Bob? said Maggie.
`Thats what it is, Miss, said Bob, quickly, exhibiting a singularly broad spe of that differeween the man and the monkey. 85 `It tells i measuring out the flannel, you see. I carry flannel, cause its light for my pack, an its dea<details></details>r stuff, you see, so a big thumb tells. I clap my thumb at the end o the yard and cut o the hither side of it, and the old wome up tot.
`But, Bob, said Maggie, looking serious, `thats cheating: I dont like to hear you say that.
`Dont you, Miss? said Bretfully. `Then Im sorry I said it. But Im so used to talking to Mumps, an he doesnt mind a bit o cheating, when its them skinflint women, as haggle and haggle, an ud like to get their flannel for nothing, an ud niver ask theirselves how I got my dinner out ont. I niver cheat anybody as doesnt want to cheat me, Miss - lors, Im a ho chap, I am, only I must hev a bit o sport, an now I dont go wi the ferrets, In got no varmint to e over but them haggling women. I wish you good evening, Miss.
`Goodby, Bob. Thank you very much fihe books. And e again to see Tom.
`Yes, Miss, said Bob, moving on a few steps; then turning half round, he said, `Ill leave off that trick wi my big thumb, if you dont think well on me for it, Miss - but it ud be a pity, it would. I couldnt find arick so good - an what ud be the use o havin a big thumb? It might as well ha been narrer.
Maggie, thus exalted into Bobs direg Madonna, laughed in spite of herself, at which her worshippers blue eyes twioo, and uhese fav auspices he touched his cap and walked away.
The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burkes grand dirge over them: they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touuch as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the pa his back, had as respectful an adoration for this dark-eyed maiden as if he had been a knight in armour calling aloud on her name as he pricked on to the fight.
That gleam of merriment soon died away from Maggies face, and perhaps only made the returning gloom deeper by trast. She was too dispirited even to like answering questions about Bobs present of books, and she carried them away to her bedroom, laying them down there aing herself on her oool, without g to look at them just yet. She leaned her cheek against the window frame and thought that the light-hearted Bob had a lot much happier than hers.
Maggies sense of loneliness and utter privation of joy had deepened with the brightness of advang spring. All the favourite outdoor nooks about home, which seemed to have doheir part with her parents in nurturing and cherishing her, were not mixed up with the home sadness and gathered no smile from the sunshine. Every affe, every delight the poor child had had was like an ag o her. There was no music for her any more - no piano, no harmonised voices, no delicious stringed instruments with their passionate cries of imprisoned spirits sending a strange vibration through her frame. And of all her school life, there was nothi her now but her little colle of school books, which she turned over with a siing sehat she khem all, and they were all barren of fort. Even at school she had often wished for books with more in them: everything she learhere seemed like the ends of long threads that snapped immediately. And now - without the i charm of sulation - Télémaque was mere bran: so were the hard dry quest<details></details>ions on Christian doe: there was no flavour in them, nth. Sometimes Maggie thought she could have been tented with abs fancies: if she could have had all Scotts novels and all Byrons poems! - then perhaps she might have found happiness enough to dull her sensibility to her actual daily life. A... they were hardly what she wanted. She could make dream-worlds of her own - but no dream-world would satisfy her now. She wanted some explanation of this hard, real life: the unhappy-looking father seated at the dull breakfast-table; the childish bewildered mother; the little sordid tasks that filled the hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary, joyless leisure; the need of some tender, demonstrative love; the cruel sehat Tom didnt mind what she thought or felt, and that they were no longer playfellows together; the privation of all pleasant things that had e to her more than to others: she wanted some key that would enable her to uand and, in uanding, ehe heavy weight that had fallen on her you. If she had been taught `real learning and wisdom, such as great men knew, she thought she should have held the secrets of life; if she had only books that she might learn for herself what wise men knew! Saints and martyrs had never ied Maggie so much as sages and poets. She knew little of saints and martyrs, and had gathered, as a general result of her teag, that they were a temporary provision against the spread of Catholicism and had all died at Smithfield.
In one of these meditations, it occurred to her that she had fotton Toms school-books, which had bee home in his trunk. But she found the stoatably shrunk down to the few old ones which had beehumbed - the Latin Diary and Grammar, a Delectus, a torropius, the well-worn Virgil, Aldrichs Logid the exasperating Euclid. Still, Latin, Euclid and Logic would surely be a siderable step in mase wisdom - in that knowledge which made men tented and even glad to live. Not that the yearning for effectual wisdom was quite unmixed: a certain mirage would now and then rise on the desert of the future, in which she seemed to see herself honoured for her surprising attais. And so the poor child, with her souls hunger and her illusions of self-flattery, began to nibble at this thick-rinded fruit of the tree of knowledge, filling her vat hours with Latiry, and the forms of the syllogism, and feeling a gleam of triumph now and then that her uanding was quite equal to these peculiarly mase studies. For a week or two she went on resolutely enough, though with an occasional sinking of heart, as if she had set out toward the Promised Land alone, and found it a thirsty, trackless, uain journey. In the severity of her early resolution she would take Aldrich out into the fields, and then look off her book towards the sky where the lark was twinkling or to the reeds and bushes by the river wh<big></big>ere the water-fowl rustled out on her anxious, awkward flight - with a startled sehat the relatioween Aldrid this living world was extremely remote for her. The discement deepened as the days went on, and the eager heart gained faster and faster oient mind. Somehow, whe at the window with her book, her eyes would fix themselves blankly odoor sunshihen they would fill with tears, and sometimes, if her mother was not in the room, the studies would all end in sobbing. She rebelled against her lot, she fainted us loneliness, and fits even of anger and hatred towards her father and mother who were so unlike what she would have them to be - towards Tom, who checked her a her thought or feeling always by some thwarting difference - would flow out over her affes and sce like a lava stream and frighten her with the sehat it was not difficult for her to bee a demon. Then her brain would be busy with wild romances of a flight from home in search of something less sordid and dreary: - she would go to some great man - Walter Scott, perhaps, and tell him how wretched and how clever she was, and he would surely do something for her. But in the middle of her vision her father would perhaps ehe room for the evening, and, surprised that she sat still, without notig him, would say plainingly, `e, am I to fetch my slippers myself? The voice pierced through Maggie like a sword: there was another sadness besides her own, and she had been thinking of turning her ba it and forsaking it.
This afternoon, the sight of Bobs cheerful freckled face had given her distent a new dire. She thought it art of the hardship of her life that there was laid upohe burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel, that she had to ehis wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest a on this earth. She wished she could have been like Bob, with his easily satisfied ignorance, or like Tom, who had something to do on which he could fix his mind with a steady purpose and disregard everything else. Poor child! as she leaned her head against the window-frame with her hands clasped tighter and tighter and her foot beating the ground, she was as lonely irouble as if she had been the only girl in the civilised world of that day, who had e out of her school-life with a soul untrained for iable struggles - with no other part of her ied share in the hard-won treasures of thought, which geions of painful toil have laid up for the raen than shreds and patches of feeble literature and false history - with much futile information about Saxon and other kings of doubtful example, but unhappily quite without that knowledge of the irreversible laws within and without her which, g the habits, bees morality, and, developing the feelings of submission and dependence, bees religion: - as lonely irouble as if every irl besides herself had been cherished and watched over by elder minds, not fetful of their own early time when need was keen and impulse strong.
At last Maggies eyes glanced down on the books that lay on the window shelf, and she half forsook her reverie to turn over listlessly the leaves of the `Portrait Gallery, but she soon pushed this aside to examihe little row of books tied together with string. `Beauties of the Spectator, `Rasselas, `Ey of Human Life, `Gregorys Letters - she khe sort of matter that was inside all these: the `Christian Year - that seemed to be a hymn-book, and she laid it down again; but Thomas à Kempis? - the name had e across her in her reading, and she felt the satisfa, which every one knows, of getting some ideas to attach to a hat strays solitary in the memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book with some curiosity: it had the ers turned down in many places, and some hand, now for ever quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen and ink marks, long since browned by time. Maggie turned from leaf to leaf and read where the quiet hand pointed... `Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the world... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there, to enjoy thy own will and pleasure thou shalt never be quiet nor free from care: for ihing somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there will be some that will cross thee... Both above and below, which way soever thou dost turn thee, everywhere thou shalt find the Cross: and everywhere of y thou must have patience, if thou wilt have ineace, and enjoy an everlasting ... If thou desire to mount unto this height, thou must set out ceously, and lay the axe to the root; that thou mayst pluck up aroy that hidden inordinate ination to thyself, and unto all private ahly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, almost all depeh, whatsoever is thhly to be overe; which evil being once overe and subdued, there will presently ensue great pead tranquillity... It is but little thou sufferest in parison of them that have suffered so much, were sly tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy sufferings of others, that thou mayst the easier bear thy little adversities. And if they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy impatience be the cause thereof... Blessed are those ears that receive the whispers of the divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of the world. Blessed are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which souh outwardly, but unto the Truth which teacheth inwardly...
A strahrill of a<kbd>.99lib.</kbd>we passed through Maggie while she read, as if she had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, hardly scious that she was reading - seeming rather to listen while a low voice said,
`Why dost thou here gaze about, sihis is not the place of thy rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to be looked on as they forward thy jourhither. All things pass away, and thou together with them. Beware thou cleave not unto them, lest thou be entangled and perish... If a man should give all his substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances, yet are they but little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he is yet far off. And if he should be of great virtue, and very ferveio is there much wanting; to wit, ohing, which is most necessary for him. What is that? That havi all, he leave himself, and go wholly out of himself, aain nothing of self-love... I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the same: Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy mueace... Then shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations, and superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate fear leave thee and inordinate love shall die.
Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that would enable her to renounce all other secrets - here was a sublime height to be reached without the help of outward things - here was insight, and strength, and quest, to be won by meairely within her own soul, where a supreme teacher was waiting to be heard. It flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a problem, that all the miseries of her young life had e from fixing her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the tral y of the universe; and for the first time she saw the possibility of shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of her own desires, of takiand out of herself, and looking at her own life as an insignifit part of a divinely guided whole. She read on and on in the old book, dev eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength; returning to it after she had been called away, and reading till the su down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight f plans of self-humiliation aire devotedness, and in the ardour of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrao that satisfa which she had so long been craving in vain. She had not perceived - how could she until she had lived longer? - the inmost truth of the old monks outps, that renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was still panting for happiness, and was iasy because she had found the key to it. She knew nothing of does and systems - of mysticism or quietism: but this voice out of the far-off middle ages, was the direunication of a human souls belief and experience, and came to Maggie as an uioned message.
I suppose that is the reason why the small old-fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpe a book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness; while expensive sermons and treatises newly issued leave all things as they were before. It was written down by a hand that waited for the hearts prompting, it is the icle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust and triumph - not written o cushions to teadurao those who are treading with bleedi oones. And so it remains to all time, a lasting record of human needs and human solations, the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced - in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much ting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours - but uhe same silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness.
In writing the history of unfashionable families, one is apt to fall into a tone of emphasis which is very far from being the tone of good society, where principles and beliefs are not only of aremely moderate kind, but are alresupposed, no subjects being eligible but such as be touched with a light and graceful irony. But then, good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner-es six weeks deep, its opera and its fa?ry ballrooms; rides of its ennui on thhbred horses, lou the club, has to keep clear of oline vortices, gets is sce done by Faraday, and its religion by the superior clergy who are to be met in the best houses: how should it have time or need for belief and emphasis? But good society, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, is of very expensive produ; requiring nothihan a wide and arduous national life densed in unfragrant deafening factories, cramping itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grinding, hammering, weaving under more or less oppression of carbonic acid - or else, spread over sheepwalks, and scattered in lonely houses and huts on the clayey or chalky lands, where the rainy days look dreary. This wide national life is based entirely on emphasis - the emphasis of want, which urges it into all the activities necessary for the maintenance of good society and light irony: it spends its heavy years often in a chill, uncarpeted fashion amidst family discord unsoftened by long corridors. Under such circumstahere are many among its myriads of souls who have absolutely needed an emphatic belief, life in this unpleasurable shape demanding some solutioo unspeculative minds; just as you inquire into the stuffing of your couch when anything galls you ther<bdo>99lib.</bdo>e, whereas eider-doerfect French sprie no question. Some have an emphatic belief in alcohol, aheir ekstasis or outside standing-ground in gin, but the rest require something that good society calls enthusiasm, something that will present motives in aire absence of high prizes, something that will give patiend feed human love when the limbs ache with weariness and human looks are hard upon us - something, clearly, that lies outside personal desires, that includes resignation for ourselves and active love for what is not ourselves. Now and then that sort of enthusiasm finds a far-eg voice that es from an experience springing out of the deepest need. And it was by being brought within the long lingering vibrations of such a voice that Maggie, with her girls fad unnoted sorrows, found an effort and a hope that helped her through two years of loneliness, making out a faith for herself without the aid of established authorities and appointed guides - for they were not at hand, and her need ressing. From what you know of her, you will not be surprised that she threw some exaggera and wilfulness, some pride and impetuosity even into her self-renunciation: her own life was still a drama for her, in which she demanded of herself that her part should be played with iy. And so it came to pass that she often lost the spirit of humility by being excessive iward act; she often strove after too high a flight and came down with her poor little half-fledged wings dabbled in the mud. For example, she not only determio work at plain sewing, that she might tribute something towards the fund iin box, but she went in the first instan her zeal of self-mortification to ask for it at a linen-shop in St Oggs, instead of getting it in a more quiet and i way, and could see nothing but what was entirely wrong and unkind, nay, perseg, in Toms reproof of her for this unnecessary act. `I dont like my sister to do such things, said Tom, `Ill take care that the debts are paid, without your l yourself in that way. Surely there was some tenderness and bravery mingled with the worldliness and self-assertion of that little speech, but Maggie held it as dross, overlooking the grains of gold, and took Toms rebuke as one of her outward crosses. Tom was very hard to her, she used to think, in her long night-watgs - to her who had always loved him so; and therove to be tented with that hardness, and to require nothing. That is the path we all like whe out on our abando of egoism - the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches grow, rather thaeep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame, where there are no leafy honours to be gathered and worn.
The old books, Virgil, Euclid, and Aldrich - that wrinkled fruit of the tree of knowledge - had been all laid by, fgie had turned her ba the vain ambition to share the thoughts of the wise. In her first ardour, she flung away the books with a sort of triumph that she had risen above the need of them, and if they had been her own she would have burhem, believing that she would never repent. She read so eagerly and stantly ihree books, the Bible, Thomas-à-Kempis, and the `Christian Year (no longer rejected as a `hymn-book) that they filled her mind with a tinual stream of rhythmic memories; and she was too ardently learning to see all nature and life in the light of her new faith to need any other material for her mind to work on, as she sat with her well-plied needle, making shirts and other plicated stitgs falsely called `plain - by no means plain to Maggie, since wristband and sleeve and the like had a capability of being sewed-in wrong side outwards in moments of mental wandering.
Hanging diligently over her sewing, Maggie was a sight any one might have been pleased to look at. That new inward life of hers, notwithstanding some volic upheavings of imprisoned passions, yet sho in her face with a tender soft light that miself as added loveliness with the gradually enriched colour and outline of her blossoming youth. Her mother felt the ge in her with a sort of puzzled wohat Maggie should be `growing up so good; it was amazing that this once `trairy child was bee so submissive, so backward to assert her own will. Maggie used to look up from her work and find her mothers eyes fixed upohey were watg and waiting for the large young glance, as if her elder frame got some needful warmth from it. The mother was getting fond of her tall, brown girl, the only bit of furniture now on which she could bestow her ay and pride, and Maggie, in spite of her own ascetic wish to have no personal ador was obliged to give way to her mother about her hair and submit to have the abundant black locks plaited into a et on the summit of her head after the pitiable fashion of those antiquated times.
`Let your mother have that bit o pleasure, my dear, said Mrs Tulliver, `Id trouble enough with your hair once.
So Maggie, glad of anything that would soothe her mother and cheer their long day together, seo the vain decoration, and showed a queenly head above her old frocks - steadily refusing, however, to look at herself in the glass. Mrs Tulliver liked to call the fathers attention to Maggies hair and other ued virtues, but he had a brusque reply to give.
`I knew well enough what shed be, before now - its nothio me. But its a pity she isnt made o ouff - shell be thrown away, I doubt: therell be nobody to marry her as is fit for her.
And Maggies graind and body fed his gloom. He sat patiently enough while she read him a chapter, or said something timidly when they were aloogether about trouble being turned into a blessing. He took it all as part of his daughters goodness, which made his misfortuhe sadder to him because they damaged her ge in life. In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unsatisfied vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings: Mr Tulliver did not want spiritual solation - he wao shake off the degradation of debt and to have his revenge.
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