Tom Is Expected
IT was a heavy disappoio Maggie that she was not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fet home from the Academy; but the m was too wet, Mrs Tulliver said, for a little girl to go out in her best bo. Maggie took the opposite view very strongly, and it was a direct sequence of this difference of opinion, that when her mother was i of brushing out the relut black aggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near, - in the vindictive determination that there should be no more ce of curls that day. `Maggie, Maggie, exclaimed Mrs Tulliver, sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, `what is to bee of you, if youre so naughty? Ill tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when they e week, and theyll never love you any more. O dear, O dear, look at your pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks ull think its a judgment on me as Ive got such a child - theyll think Ive done summat wicked.
Before this remonstrance was finished Maggie was already out of hearing, making her way towards the great attic that ran uhe old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggies favourite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold: here she fretted out all her ill-humours, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs, and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortuhis was the trunk of a large wooden doll, whice stared with the rou of eyes above the reddest of cheeks, but was irely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head orated as many crises in Maggies nine years of earthly struggle; that luxury of vengeance having been suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg. But immediately afterwards Maggie had reflected that if she drove many nails in, she would not be so well able to fancy that the head was hurt when she k against the wall, nor to fort it, and make believe to poultice it when her fury was abated; for even aunt Glegg would be pitiable when she had been hurt very much, and thhly humiliated, so as to beg her nieces pardon. Sihen, she had driven no more nails in, but had soothed herself by alternately grinding aing the wooden head against the rough brick of the great eys that made two square pillars supp the roof. That was what she did this m on reag the attic, sobbing all the while with a passion that expelled every other form of sciousness - even the memory of the grievahat had caused it. As at last the sobs were getting quieter and the grinding less fierce, a sudden beam of sunshine, falling through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten shelves, made her throw away the Fetish and run to the window. The sun was really breaking out, the sound of the mill seemed cheerful again, the granary doors were open, and there was Yap, the queer white and brown terrier with ourned back, trotting about and sniffing vaguely as if he were in search of a panion. It was irresistible: Maggie tossed her hair bad ran downstairs, seized her bo without putting it on, peeped and then dashed along the passage lest she should enter her mother, and was quickly out in the yard, whirling round li