To Garum Firs
WHILE the possible troubles of Maggies future were occupying her fathers mind, she herself was tasting only the bitterness of the present. Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow. The fact was, the day had begun ill with Maggie. The pleasure of having Lucy to look at, and the prospect of the afternoon visit to Garum Firs where she would hear uncle Pullets musical-box had been marred as early as eleven oclock by the advent of the hair-dresser from St Oggs who had spoken in the severest terms of the dition in which he had found her hair, holding up one jagged lock after another and saying, `See here! tut - tut - tut! in a tone of mingled disgust and pity, whiaggies imagination was equivalent to the stro expression of public opinion. Mr Rappit, the hairdresser, with his well-anointed al locks tending wavily upward, like the simulated pyramid of flame on a moal urn, seemed to her at that moment the most formidable of her poraries, into whose street at St Oggs she would carefully refrain from entering through the rest of her life.
Moreover, the preparation for a visit being always a serious affair in the Dodson family, Martha was enjoio have Mrs Tullivers room ready an hour earlier than usual, that the laying-out of the best clothes might not be deferred till the last moment, as was sometimes the case in families of lax views where the ribbon-strings were never rolled up, where there was little or no ing in silver paper, and where the sehat the Sunday clothes could be got at quite easily produo shock to the mind. Already at twelve oclock, Mrs Tulliver had on her visiting e with a protective apparatus of brown holland, as if she had been a piece of stain furniture in danger of flies; Maggie was frowning and twisting her shoulders that she might if possible shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers, while her mother was remonstrating, `Dont, Maggie, my dear - dont look so ugly! and Toms cheeks were looking particularly brilliant as a relief to his best blue suit, which he wore with being ess, having, after a little wrangling, effected what was always the one point of io him in his toilette - he had transferred all the tents of his everyday pockets to those actually in wear.
As for Lucy, she was just as pretty a as she had beeerday: no acts ever happeo her clothes, and she was never unfortable in them, so that she looked with w pity at Maggie, pouting and writhing uhe exasperating tucker. Maggie would certainly have torn it off, if she had not been checked by the remembrance of her ret humiliation about her hair: as it was, she fined herself to fretting and twisting and behaving peevishly about the card-houses which they were allowed to build till dinner, as a suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best clothes. Tom build perfect pyramids of houses; but Maggies would never bear the laying-on of the roof: - it was always so with the things that Maggie made, and Tom had deduced the clusion that no girls could ever make anything. But it happehat Lucy proved wonderfully clever at building: she hahe cards so lightly and moved so gently that Tom desded to admire her houses as well as his own, the more readily because she had asked him to teach her. Maggie too would have admired Lucys houses, and would have given up her own unsuccessful building to plate them, without ill-temper, if her tucker had not made her peevish and if Tom had not insiderately laughed wh