Mr Tulliver of Dorlill, Declares His Resolution about Tom
`WHAT I want, you know, said Mr Tulliver, `what I want, is to give Tom a good eddication: an eddication asll be a bread to him. That was what I was thinking on when I gave notice for him to leave th Academy at Ladyday. I mean to put him to a dht good school at Midsummer. The two years at th Academy ud ha done well enough, if Id meant to make a miller and farmer of him, for hes had a fine sight more schoolin nor I ever got: all the learnin my father ever paid for was a bit o birch at one end and the alphabet at th other. But I should like Tom to be a bit of scholard, so as he might be up to the tricks othese fellows as talk fine and write wi a flourish. It ud be a help to me wi these law-suits and arbitrations and things. I wouldnt make a dht lawyer o the lad - I should be sorry for him to be a raskill - but a sort o engineer, or a surveyor, or an aueer and vallyer, like Riley, or ohem smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch- and a high stool. Theyre pretty nigh all one, and theyre not far off being even wi the law, I believe; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i the face as hard as o looks another. Hes none frighted at him. Mr Tulliver eaking to his wife, a blond ely woman in a fan-shaped cap. (I am afraid to think how long it is since fan-shaped caps were worn - they must be so near ing in again. At that time, when Mrs Tulliver was nearly forty, they were St Oggs and sidered sweet things.)
`Well, Mr Tulliver, you know best: Ive no objes. But hadnt I better kill a couple o fowl and have th aunts and uo dinner week, so as you may hear what Sister Glegg and Sister Pullet have got to say about it? Theres a couple o fowl wants killing!
`You may kill every fowl i the yard, if you like, Bessy; but I shall ask her aunt nor uncle what Im to do wimy own lad, said Mr Tulliver, defiantly.
`Dear heart, said Mrs Tulliver, shocked at this sanguinary rhetoric, `how you talk so, Mr Tulliver? But its your way to speak disrespectful o my family, and Sister Glegg throws all the blame upo me, though Im sure Im as i as the babe unborn. For nobodys ever heard me say as it wasnt lucky for my children to have aunts and uncles as live indepe. Howiver, if Toms to go to a new school, I should like him to go where I wash him and mend him; else he might as well have calico as linen, for theyd be one as yallow as th other before theyd been washed half-a-dozen times. And then, when the box is goinbackards and forrards, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork-pie, or an apple; for he do with ary bit, bless him, whether they stint him at the meals or no. My children eat as much victuals as most, thank God.
`Well, well, we wont send him out o reach o the carriers cart, if other things fit in, said Mr Tulliver. `But you mustnt put a spoke i the wheel about the washin, if we t get a school near enough. Thats the fault I have to find wi you, Bessy: if you see a stick i the road, youre allays thinkin you t step over it. Youd wa to hire a good waggoner, cause hed got a mole on his face.
`Dear heart! said Mrs Tulliver, in mild surprise, `when did I iver make objes to a man, because hed got a mole on his face? Im sure Im rether fond o the moles, for my brother, as is dead an gone, had a mole on his brow. But I t remember your iver to hire a waggoner with a mole, Mr Tulliver. There was John Gibbs hadnt a mole on his faore nor you have, an I was a