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the passage lest she should encounter her mother, and was quickly out in the yard, whirling round like a Pythoness, and singing as she whirled, “Yap, Yap, Tom’s coming home!” while Yap danced and barked round her, as much as to say, if there was any noise wanted he was the dog for it.

“Hegh, hegh, Miss! you’ll make yourself giddy, an’ tumble down i’ the dirt,” said Luke, the head miller, a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty, black-eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general mealiness, like an auricula.

Maggie paused in her whirling and said, staggering a little, “Oh no, it doesn’t make me giddy, Luke; may I go into the mill with you?”

Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, and often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark eyes flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the unresting motion of the great stones, giving her a dim, delicious awe as at the presence of an uncontrollable force; the meal forever pouring, pouring; the fine white powder softening all surfaces, and making the very spidernets look like a faery lace-work; the sweet, pure scent of the meal,—all helped to make Maggie feel that the mill was a little world apart from her outside every-day life. The spiders were especially a subject of speculation with her. She wondered if they had any relatives outside the mill, for in that case there must be a painful difficulty in their family intercourse,—a fat and floury spider, accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin’s table where the fly was au naturel, and the lady spiders must be mutually shocked at each other’s appearance. But the part of the mill she liked best was the topmost story,—the corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps of grain, which she could sit on and slide down continually. She was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with Luke, to whom she was very communicative, wishing him to think well of her understanding, as her father did.

Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the present occasion for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was requisite in mill-society,—

“I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you, Luke?”

“Nay, Miss, an’ not much o’ that,” said Luke, with great frankness. “I’m no reader, I aren’t.”

“But if I lent you one of my books, Luke? I’ve not got any very pretty books that would be easy for you to read; but there’s ‘Pug’s Tour of Europe,’—that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn’t understand the reading, the pictures would help you; they show the looks and ways of the people, and what they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you know, and one sitting on a barrel.”

“Nay, Miss, I’n no opinion o’ Dutchmen. There ben’t much good i’ knowin’ about them.”

“But they’re our fellow-creatures, Luke; we ought to know about our fellow-creatures.”

“Not much o’ fellow-creaturs, I think, Miss; all I know—my old master, as war a knowin’ man, used to say, says he, ‘If e’er I sow my wheat wi’out brinin’, I’m a Dutchman,’ says he; an’ that war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I aren’t goin’ to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There’s fools enoo, an’ rogues enoo, wi’out lookin’ i’ books for ‘em.”

“Oh, well,” said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke’s unexpectedly decided views about Dutchmen, “perhaps you would like ‘Animated Nature’ better; that’s not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants and kangaroos, and the civet-cat, and the sunfish, and a bird sitting on its tail,—I forget its name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn’t you like to know about them, Luke?”

“Nay, Miss, I’n got to keep count o’ the flour an’ corn; I can’t do wi’ knowin’ so many things besides my work. That’s what brings folks to the gallows,—knowin’ everything but what they’n got to get their bread by. An’ they’re mostly lies, I think, what’s printed i’ the books: them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i’ the streets.”

“Why, you’re like my brother Tom, Luke,” said Maggie, wishing to turn the conversation agreeably; “Tom’s not fond of reading. I love Tom so dearly, Luke,—better than anybody else in the world. When he grows up I shall keep his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell him everything he doesn’t know. But I think Tom’s clever, for all he doesn’t like books; he makes beautiful whipcord and rabbit-pens.”

“Ah,” said Luke, “but he’ll be fine an’ vexed, as the rabbits are all dead.”

“Dead!” screamed Maggie, jumping up from her sliding seat on the corn. “Oh dear, Luke! What! the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe that Tom spent all his money to buy?”

“As dead as moles,” said Luke, fetching his comparison from the unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall.

“Oh dear, Luke,” said Maggie, in a piteous tone, while the big tears rolled down her cheek; “Tom told me to take care of ‘em, and I forgot. What shall I do?”

“Well, you see, Miss, they were in that far tool-house, an’ it was nobody’s business to see to ‘em. I reckon Master Tom told Harry to feed ‘em, but there’s no countin’ on Harry; he’s an offal creatur as iver come about the primises, he is. He remembers nothing but his own inside—an’ I wish it’ud gripe him.”

“Oh, Luke, Tom told me to be sure and remember the rabbits every day; but how could I, when they didn’t come into my head, you know? Oh, he will be so angry with me, I know he will, and so sorry about his rabbits, and so am I sorry. Oh, what shall I do?”

“Don’t you fret, Miss,” said Luke, soothingly; “they’re nash things, them lop-eared rabbits; they’d happen ha’ died, if they’d been fed. Things out o’ natur niver thrive: God A’mighty doesn’t like ‘em. He made the rabbits’ ears to lie back, an’ it’s nothin’ but contrairiness to make ‘em hing down like a mastiff dog’s. Master Tom ‘ull know better nor buy such things another time. Don’t you fret, Miss. Will you come along home wi’ me, and see my wife? I’m a-goin’ this minute.”

The invitation offered an agreeable distraction to Maggie’s grief, and her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Luke’s side to his pleasant cottage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and with the added dignity of a lean-to pigsty, at the other end of the Mill fields. Mrs. Moggs, Luke’s wife, was a decidely agreeable acquaintance. She exhibited her hospitality in bread and treacle, and possessed various works of art. Maggie actually forgot that she had any special cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a chair to look at a remarkable series of pictures representing the Prodigal Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except that, as might have been expected from his defective moral character, he had not, like that accomplished hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense with a wig. But the indefinable weight the dead rabbits had left on her mind caused her to feel more than usual pity for the career of this weak young man, particularly when she looked at the picture where he leaned against a tree with a flaccid appearance, his knee-breeches unbuttoned and his wig awry, while the swine apparently of some foreign breed, seemed to insult him by their good spirits over their feast of husks.

“I’m very glad his father took him back again, aren’t you, Luke?” she said. “For he was very sorry, you know, and wouldn’t do wrong again.”

“Eh, Miss,” said Luke, “he’d be no great shakes, I doubt, let’s feyther do what he would for him.”

That was a painful thought to Maggie, and she wished much that the subsequent history of the young man had not been left a blank.

Chapter V Tom Comes Home

Tom was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another fluttering heart besides Maggie’s when it was late enough for the sound of the gig-wheels to be expected; for if Mrs. Tulliver had a strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came,—that quick light bowling of the gig-wheels,—and in spite of the wind, which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs. Tulliver’s curls and capstrings, she came outside the door, and even held her hand on Maggie’s offending head, forgetting all the griefs of the morning.

“There he is, my sweet lad! But, Lord ha’ mercy! he’s got never a collar on; it’s been lost on the road, I’ll be bound, and spoilt the set.”

Mrs. Tulliver stood with her arms open; Maggie jumped first on one leg and then on the other; while Tom descended from the gig, and said, with masculine reticence as to the tender emotions, “Hallo! Yap—what! are you there?”

Nevertheless he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, though Maggie hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his blue-gray eyes wandered toward the croft and the lambs and the river, where he promised himself that he would begin to fish the first thing tomorrow morning. He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and at twelve or thirteen years of age look as much alike as goslings,—a lad with light-brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eyebrows,—a physiognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything but the generic character to boyhood; as different as possible from poor Maggie’s phiz, which Nature seemed to have moulded and colored with the most decided intention. But that same Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies that she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals some of her most rigid, inflexible purposes, some of her most unmodifiable characters; and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this pink-and-white bit of masculinity with the indeterminate features.

“Maggie,” said Tom, confidentially, taking her into a corner, as soon as his mother was gone out to examine his box and the warm parlor had taken off the chill he had felt from the long drive, “you don’t know what I’ve got in my pockets,” nodding his head up and down as a means of rousing her sense of mystery.

“No,” said Maggie. “How stodgy they look, Tom! Is it marls (marbles) or cobnuts?” Maggie’s heart sank a little, because Tom always said it was “no good” playing with her at those games, she played so badly.

“Marls! no; I’ve swopped all my marls with the little fellows, and cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only when the nuts are green. But see here!” He drew something half out of his right-hand pocket.

“What is it?” said Maggie, in a whisper. “I can see nothing but a bit of yellow.”

“Why, it’s—a—new—guess, Maggie!”

“Oh, I can’t guess, Tom,” said Maggie, impatiently.

“Don’t be a spitfire, else I won’t tell you,” said Tom, thrusting his hand back into his pocket and looking determined.

“No, Tom,” said Maggie, imploringly, laying hold of the arm that was held stiffly in the pocket. “I’m not

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