The Mill on the Floss
appreciating strangers. So it was agreed that she should not be fetched
home till the end of the fortnight.
“Now, then, come with me into the study, Maggie,” said Tom, as their
father drove away. “What do you shake and toss your head now for, you
silly?” he continued; for though her hair was now under a new
dispensation, and was brushed smoothly behind her ears, she seemed
still in imagination to be tossing it out of her eyes. “It makes you
look as if you were crazy.”
“Oh, I can’t help it,” said Maggie, impatiently. “Don’t tease me, Tom.
Oh, what books!” she exclaimed, as she saw the bookcases in the study.
“How I should like to have as many books as that!”
“Why, you couldn’t read one of ’em,” said Tom, triumphantly. “They’re
all Latin.”
“No, they aren’t,” said Maggie. “I can read the back of this,—‘History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.’”
“Well, what does that mean? _You_ don’t know,” said Tom, wagging his
head.
“But I could soon find out,” said Maggie, scornfully.
“Why, how?”
“I should look inside, and see what it was about.”
“You’d better not, Miss Maggie,” said Tom, seeing her hand on the
volume. “Mr Stelling lets nobody touch his books without leave, and _I_
shall catch it, if you take it out.”
“Oh, very well. Let me see all _your_ books, then,” said Maggie,
turning to throw her arms round Tom’s neck, and rub his cheek with her
small round nose.
Tom, in the gladness of his heart at having dear old Maggie to dispute
with and crow over again, seized her round the waist, and began to jump
with her round the large library table. Away they jumped with more and
more vigor, till Maggie’s hair flew from behind her ears, and twirled
about like an animated mop. But the revolutions round the table became
more and more irregular in their sweep, till at last reaching Mr
Stelling’s reading stand, they sent it thundering down with its heavy
lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground-floor, and the study
was a one-storied wing to the house, so that the downfall made no
alarming resonance, though Tom stood dizzy and aghast for a few
minutes, dreading the appearance of Mr or Mrs Stelling.
“Oh, I say, Maggie,” said Tom at last, lifting up the stand, “we must
keep quiet here, you know. If we break anything Mrs Stelling’ll make us
cry peccavi.”
“What’s that?” said Maggie.
“Oh, it’s the Latin for a good scolding,” said Tom, not without some
pride in his knowledge.
“Is she a cross woman?” said Maggie.
“I believe you!” said Tom, with an emphatic nod.
“I think all women are crosser than men,” said Maggie. “Aunt Glegg’s a
great deal crosser than uncle Glegg, and mother scolds me more than
father does.”
“Well, _you’ll_ be a woman some day,” said Tom, “so _you_ needn’t
talk.”
“But I shall be a _clever_ woman,” said Maggie, with a toss.
“Oh, I dare say, and a nasty conceited thing. Everybody’ll hate you.”
“But you oughtn’t to hate me, Tom; it’ll be very wicked of you, for I
shall be your sister.”
“Yes, but if you’re a nasty disagreeable thing I _shall_ hate you.”
“Oh, but, Tom, you won’t! I sha’n’t be disagreeable. I shall be very
good to you, and I shall be good to everybody. You won’t hate me
really, will you, Tom?”
“Oh, bother! never mind! Come, it’s time for me to learn my lessons.
See here! what I’ve got to do,” said Tom, drawing Maggie toward him and
showing her his theorem, while she pushed her hair behind her ears, and
prepared herself to prove her capability of helping him in Euclid. She
began to read with full confidence in her own powers, but presently,
becoming quite bewildered, her face flushed with irritation. It was
unavoidable; she must confess her incompetency, and she was not fond of
humiliation.
“It’s nonsense!” she said, “and very ugly stuff; nobody need want to
make it out.”
“Ah, there, now, Miss Maggie!” said Tom, drawing the book away, and
wagging his head at her, “You see you’re not so clever as you thought
you were.”
“Oh,” said Maggie, pouting, “I dare say I could make it out, if I’d
learned what goes before, as you have.”
“But that’s what you just couldn’t, Miss Wisdom,” said Tom. “For it’s
all the harder when you know what goes before; for then you’ve got to
say what definition 3 is, and what axiom V. is. But get along with you
now; I must go on with this. Here’s the Latin Grammar. See what you can
make of that.”
Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite soothing after her mathematical
mortification; for she delighted in new words, and quickly found that
there was an English Key at the end, which would make her very wise
about Latin, at slight expense. She presently made up her mind to skip
the rules in the Syntax, the examples became so absorbing. These
mysterious sentences, snatched from an unknown context,—like strange
horns of beasts, and leaves of unknown plants, brought from some
far-off region,—gave boundless scope to her imagination, and were all
the more fascinating because they were in a peculiar tongue of their
own, which she could learn to interpret. It was really very
interesting, the Latin Grammar that Tom had said no girls could learn;
and she was proud because she found it interesting. The most
fragmentary examples were her favourites. _Mors omnibus est communis_
would have been jejune, only she liked to know the Latin; but the
fortunate gentleman whom every one congratulated because he had a son
“endowed with _such_ a disposition” afforded her a great deal of
pleasant conjecture, and she was quite lost in the “thick grove
penetrable by no star,” when Tom called out,—
“Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar!”
“Oh, Tom, it’s such a pretty book!” she said, as she jumped out of the
large arm-chair to give it him; “it’s much prettier than the
Dictionary. I could learn Latin very soon. I don’t think it’s at all
hard.”
“Oh, I know what you’ve been doing,” said Tom; “you’ve been reading the
English at the end. Any donkey can do that.”
Tom seized the book and opened it with a determined and business-like
air, as much as to say that he had a lesson to learn which no donkeys
would find themselves equal to. Maggie, rather piqued, turned to the
bookcases to amuse herself with puzzling out the titles.
Presently Tom called to her: “Here, Magsie, come and hear if I can say
this. Stand at that end of the table, where Mr Stelling sits when he
hears me.”
Maggie obeyed, and took the open book.
“Where do you begin, Tom?”
“Oh, I begin at _’Appellativa arborum,’_ because I say all over again
what I’ve been learning this week.”
Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines; and Maggie was beginning
to forget her office of prompter in speculating as to what _mas_ could
mean, which came twice over, when he stuck fast at _Sunt etiam
volucrum_.
“Don’t tell me, Maggie; _Sunt etiam volucrum_—_Sunt etiam volucrum_—_ut
ostrea, cetus_——”
“No,” said Maggie, opening her mouth and shaking her head.
“_Sunt etiam volucrum_,” said Tom, very slowly, as if the next words
might be expected to come sooner when he gave them this strong hint
that they were waited for.
“C, e, u,” said Maggie, getting impatient.
“Oh, I know—hold your tongue,” said Tom. “_Ceu passer, hirundo;
Ferarum_—_ferarum_——” Tom took his pencil and made several hard dots
with it on his book-cover—“_ferarum_——”
“Oh dear, oh dear, Tom,” said Maggie, “what a time you are! _Ut_——”
“_Ut ostrea_——”
“No, no,” said Maggie, “_ut tigris_——”
“Oh yes, now I can do,” said Tom; “it was _tigris, vulpes_, I’d
forgotten: _ut tigris, volupes; et Piscium_.”
With some further stammering and repetition, Tom got through the next
few lines.
“Now, then,” he said, “the next is what I’ve just learned for
to-morrow. Give me hold of the book a minute.”
After some whispered gabbling, assisted by the beating of his fist on
the table, Tom returned the book.
“_Mascula nomina in a_,” he began.
“No, Tom,” said Maggie, “that doesn’t come next. It’s _Nomen non
creskens genittivo_——”
“_Creskens genittivo!_” exclaimed Tom, with a derisive laugh, for Tom
had learned this omitted passage for his yesterday’s lesson, and a
young gentleman does not require an intimate or extensive acquaintance
with Latin before he can feel the pitiable absurdity of a false
quantity. “_Creskens genittivo!_ What a little silly you are, Maggie!”
“Well, you needn’t laugh, Tom, for you didn’t remember it at all. I’m
sure it’s spelt so; how was I to know?”
“Phee-e-e-h! I told you girls couldn’t learn Latin. It’s _Nomen non
crescens genitivo_.”
“Very well, then,” said Maggie, pouting. “I can say that as well as you
can. And you don’t mind your stops. For you ought to stop twice as long
at a semicolon as you do at a comma, and you make the longest stops
where there ought to be no stop at all.”
“Oh, well, don’t chatter. Let me go on.”
They were presently fetched to spend the rest of the evening in the
drawing-room, and Maggie became so animated with Mr Stelling, who, she
felt sure, admired her cleverness, that Tom was rather amazed and
alarmed at her audacity. But she was suddenly subdued by Mr Stelling’s
alluding to a little girl of whom he had heard that she once ran away
to the gypsies.
“What a very odd little girl that must be!” said Mrs Stelling, meaning
to be playful; but a playfulness that turned on her supposed oddity was
not at all to Maggie’s taste. She feared that Mr Stelling, after all,
did not think much of her, and went to bed in rather low spirits. Mrs
Stelling, she felt, looked at her as if she thought her hair was very
ugly because it hung down straight behind.
Nevertheless it was a very happy fortnight to Maggie, this visit to
Tom. She was allowed to be in the study while he had his lessons, and
in her various readings got very deep into the examples in the Latin
Grammar. The astronomer who hated women generally caused her so much
puzzling speculation that she one day asked Mr Stelling if all
astronomers hated women, or whether it was only this particular
astronomer. But forestalling his answer, she said,—
“I suppose it’s all astronomers; because, you know, they live up in
high towers, and if the women came there they might talk and hinder
them from looking at the stars.”
Mr Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they were on the best
terms. She told Tom she should like to go to school to Mr Stelling, as
he did, and learn just the same things. She knew she could do Euclid,
for she had looked into it again, and she saw what A B C meant; they
were the names of the lines.
“I’m sure you couldn’t do it, now,” said Tom; “and I’ll just ask Mr
Stelling if you could.”
“I don’t mind,” said the little conceited minx, “I’ll ask him myself.”
“Mr Stelling,” she said, that same evening when they were in the
drawing-room, “couldn’t I do Euclid, and all Tom’s lessons, if you were
to teach me instead of him?”
“No, you couldn’t,” said Tom, indignantly. “Girls can’t do Euclid; can
they, sir?”
“They can pick up a little of everything, I dare say,” said Mr
Stelling. “They’ve a great deal of superficial cleverness; but they
couldn’t go far into anything. They’re quick and shallow.”
Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his triumph by wagging
his head at Maggie, behind Mr Stelling’s chair. As for Maggie, she had
hardly ever been so mortified. She had been so proud to be called
“quick” all her little life, and now it appeared that this quickness
was the brand of inferiority. It would have been better to be slow,
like Tom.
“Ha, ha! Miss Maggie!” said Tom, when they were alone; “you see it’s
not such a fine thing to be quick. You’ll never go far into anything,
you know.”
And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful destiny that she had no
spirit for a retort.
But when this small apparatus of shallow quickness was fetched away in