The Mill on the Floss
“Well, sister, you’re late; what’s the matter?” said Mrs Glegg, rather
sharply, as they shook hands.
Mrs Pullet sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind, before she
answered,—
“She’s gone,” unconsciously using an impressive figure of rhetoric.
“It isn’t the glass this time, then,” thought Mrs Tulliver.
“Died the day before yesterday,” continued Mrs Pullet; “an’ her legs
was as thick as my body,” she added, with deep sadness, after a pause.
“They’d tapped her no end o’ times, and the water—they say you might
ha’ swum in it, if you’d liked.”
“Well, Sophy, it’s a mercy she’s gone, then, whoever she may be,” said
Mrs Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear
and decided; “but I can’t think who you’re talking of, for my part.”
“But _I_ know,” said Mrs Pullet, sighing and shaking her head; “and
there isn’t another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as it’s old
Mrs Sutton o’ the Twentylands.”
“Well, she’s no kin o’ yours, nor much acquaintance as I’ve ever heared
of,” said Mrs Glegg, who always cried just as much as was proper when
anything happened to her own “kin,” but not on other occasions.
“She’s so much acquaintance as I’ve seen her legs when they was like
bladders. And an old lady as had doubled her money over and over again,
and kept it all in her own management to the last, and had her pocket
with her keys in under her pillow constant. There isn’t many old
_par_ish’ners like her, I doubt.”
“And they say she’d took as much physic as ’ud fill a wagon,” observed
Mr Pullet.
“Ah!” sighed Mrs Pullet, “she’d another complaint ever so many years
before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn’t make out what it
was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she
said, ‘Mrs Pullet, if ever you have the dropsy, you’ll think o’ me.’
She _did_ say so,” added Mrs Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again;
“those were her very words. And she’s to be buried o’ Saturday, and
Pullet’s bid to the funeral.”
“Sophy,” said Mrs Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of
rational remonstrance,—“Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and injuring
your health about people as don’t belong to you. Your poor father never
did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o’ the family as I ever
heard of. You couldn’t fret no more than this, if we’d heared as our
cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will.”
Mrs Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather
flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. It was
not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their neighbours
who had left them nothing; but Mrs Pullet had married a gentleman
farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and everything
else to the highest pitch of respectability.
“Mrs Sutton didn’t die without making her will, though,” said Mr
Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to sanction
his wife’s tears; “ours is a rich parish, but they say there’s nobody
else to leave as many thousands behind ’em as Mrs Sutton. And she’s
left no leggicies to speak on,—left it all in a lump to her husband’s
nevvy.”
“There wasn’t much good i’ being so rich, then,” said Mrs Glegg, “if
she’d got none but husband’s kin to leave it to. It’s poor work when
that’s all you’ve got to pinch yourself for. Not as I’m one o’ those as
’ud like to die without leaving more money out at interest than other
folks had reckoned; but it’s a poor tale when it must go out o’ your
own family.”
“I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs Pullet, who had recovered sufficiently to
take off her veil and fold it carefully, “it’s a nice sort o’ man as
Mrs Sutton has left her money to, for he’s troubled with the asthmy,
and goes to bed every night at eight o’clock. He told me about it
himself—as free as could be—one Sunday when he came to our church. He
wears a hareskin on his chest, and has a trembling in his talk,—quite a
gentleman sort o’ man. I told him there wasn’t many months in the year
as I wasn’t under the doctor’s hands. And he said, ‘Mrs Pullet, I can
feel for you.’ That was what he said,—the very words. Ah!” sighed Mrs
Pullet, shaking her head at the idea that there were but few who could
enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and white mixture,
strong stuff in small bottles, and weak stuff in large bottles, damp
boluses at a shilling, and draughts at eighteenpence. “Sister, I may as
well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the cap-box was put
out?” she added, turning to her husband.
Mr Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and
hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.
“They’ll bring it upstairs, sister,” said Mrs Tulliver, wishing to go
at once, lest Mrs Glegg should begin to explain her feelings about
Sophy’s being the first Dodson who ever ruined her constitution with
doctor’s stuff.
Mrs Tulliver was fond of going upstairs with her sister Pullet, and
looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and
discussing millinery in general. This was part of Bessy’s weakness that
stirred Mrs Glegg’s sisterly compassion: Bessy went far too well
dressed, considering; and she was too proud to dress her child in the
good clothing her sister Glegg gave her from the primeval strata of her
wardrobe; it was a sin and a shame to buy anything to dress that child,
if it wasn’t a pair of shoes. In this particular, however, Mrs Glegg
did her sister Bessy some injustice, for Mrs Tulliver had really made
great efforts to induce Maggie to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk
frock made out of her aunt Glegg’s, but the results had been such that
Mrs Tulliver was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom; for
Maggie, declaring that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had taken an
opportunity of basting it together with the roast beef the first Sunday
she wore it, and finding this scheme answer, she had subsequently
pumped on the bonnet with its green ribbons, so as to give it a general
resemblance to a sage cheese garnished with withered lettuces. I must
urge in excuse for Maggie, that Tom had laughed at her in the bonnet,
and said she looked like an old Judy. Aunt Pullet, too, made presents
of clothes, but these were always pretty enough to please Maggie as
well as her mother. Of all her sisters, Mrs Tulliver certainly
preferred her sister Pullet, not without a return of preference; but
Mrs Pullet was sorry Bessy had those naughty, awkward children; she
would do the best she could by them, but it was a pity they weren’t as
good and as pretty as sister Deane’s child. Maggie and Tom, on their
part, thought their aunt Pullet tolerable, chiefly because she was not
their aunt Glegg. Tom always declined to go more than once during his
holidays to see either of them. Both his uncles tipped him that once,
of course; but at his aunt Pullet’s there were a great many toads to
pelt in the cellar-area, so that he preferred the visit to her. Maggie
shuddered at the toads, and dreamed of them horribly, but she liked her
uncle Pullet’s musical snuff-box. Still, it was agreed by the sisters,
in Mrs Tulliver’s absence, that the Tulliver blood did not mix well
with the Dodson blood; that, in fact, poor Bessy’s children were
Tullivers, and that Tom, notwithstanding he had the Dodson complexion,
was likely to be as “contrairy” as his father. As for Maggie, she was
the picture of her aunt Moss, Mr Tulliver’s sister,—a large-boned
woman, who had married as poorly as could be; had no china, and had a
husband who had much ado to pay his rent. But when Mrs Pullet was alone
with Mrs Tulliver upstairs, the remarks were naturally to the
disadvantage of Mrs Glegg, and they agreed, in confidence, that there
was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane would come out next. But
their _tête-à-tête_ was curtailed by the appearance of Mrs Deane with
little Lucy; and Mrs Tulliver had to look on with a silent pang while
Lucy’s blond curls were adjusted. It was quite unaccountable that Mrs
Deane, the thinnest and sallowest of all the Miss Dodsons, should have
had this child, who might have been taken for Mrs Tulliver’s any day.
And Maggie always looked twice as dark as usual when she was by the
side of Lucy.
She did to-day, when she and Tom came in from the garden with their
father and their uncle Glegg. Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very
carelessly, and coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl,
rushed at once to Lucy, who was standing by her mother’s knee.
Certainly the contrast between the cousins was conspicuous, and to
superficial eyes was very much to the disadvantage of Maggie though a
connoisseur might have seen “points” in her which had a higher promise
for maturity than Lucy’s natty completeness. It was like the contrast
between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up
the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her was
neat,—her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her little
straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather
darker than her curls, to match hazel eyes, which looked up with shy
pleasure at Maggie, taller by the head, though scarcely a year older.
Maggie always looked at Lucy with delight.
She was fond of fancying a world where the people never got any larger
than children of their own age, and she made the queen of it just like
Lucy, with a little crown on her head, and a little sceptre in her
hand—only the queen was Maggie herself in Lucy’s form.
“Oh, Lucy,” she burst out, after kissing her, “you’ll stay with Tom and
me, won’t you? Oh, kiss her, Tom.”
Tom, too, had come up to Lucy, but he was not going to kiss her—no; he
came up to her with Maggie, because it seemed easier, on the whole,
than saying, “How do you do?” to all those aunts and uncles. He stood
looking at nothing in particular, with the blushing, awkward air and
semi-smile which are common to shy boys when in company,—very much as
if they had come into the world by mistake, and found it in a degree of
undress that was quite embarrassing.
“Heyday!” said aunt Glegg, with loud emphasis. “Do little boys and
gells come into a room without taking notice of their uncles and aunts?
That wasn’t the way when _I_ was a little gell.”
“Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears,” said Mrs Tulliver,
looking anxious and melancholy. She wanted to whisper to Maggie a
command to go and have her hair brushed.
“Well, and how do you do? And I hope you’re good children, are you?”
said Aunt Glegg, in the same loud, emphatic way, as she took their
hands, hurting them with her large rings, and kissing their cheeks much
against their desire. “Look up, Tom, look up. Boys as go to
boarding-schools should hold their heads up. Look at me now.” Tom
declined that pleasure apparently, for he tried to draw his hand away.
“Put your hair behind your ears, Maggie, and keep your frock on your
shoulder.”
Aunt Glegg always spoke to them in this loud, emphatic way, as if she
considered them deaf, or perhaps rather idiotic; it was a means, she
thought, of making them feel that they were accountable creatures, and
might be a salutary check on naughty tendencies. Bessy’s children were
so spoiled—they’d need have somebody to make them feel their duty.
“Well, my dears,” said aunt Pullet, in a compassionate voice, “you grow
wonderful fast. I doubt they’ll outgrow their strength,” she added,
looking over their heads, with a melancholy expression, at their
mother. “I think the gell has too much hair. I’d have it thinned and
cut shorter, sister, if I was you; it isn’t good for her health. It’s
that as makes her skin so brown, I shouldn’t wonder. Don’t you think
so, sister Deane?”
“I can’t say, I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs Deane, shutting her lips