Mr Moss, who when he married Miss Tulliver had been regarded as the buck of Basset, now wore a beard nearly a week old and had the depressed, unexpectant air of a machine horse. He answered in a patient-grumbling tone, `Why, poor farmers like me must do as they can: they must leave it to them as have got money to play with to put half as much into the ground as they mean to get out of it.

Mr Tulliver, when under the influence of a strong feeling, had a promptitude in action that may seem inconsistent with that painful sense of the complicated puzzling nature of human affairs under which his more dispassionate deliberations were conducted; but it is really not improbable that there was a direct relation between these apparently contradictory phenomena, since I have observed that for getting a strong impression that a skein is tangled, there is nothing like snatching hastily at a single thread. It was owing to this promptitude that Mr Tulliver was on horse-back soon after dinner the next day - (he was not dyspeptic) - on his way to Basset to see his sister Moss and her husband. For having made up his mind irrevocably that he would pay Mrs Glegg her loan of five hundred pounds, it naturally occurred to him that he had a promissory note for three hundred pounds lent to his brother-in-law Moss, and if said brother-in-law could manage to pay in the money within a given time, it would go far to lessen the fallacious air of inconvenience which Mr Tullivers spirited step might have worn in the eyes of weak people who require to know precisely how a thing is to be done before they are strongly confident that it will be easy.

`Four of em, bless em, said Mrs Moss, with a sigh, stroking Lizzys hair on each side of her forehead, `as many as theres boys. Theyve got a brother apiece.

`Ay: shes fonder o you than o the other aunts, I think. She takes after our family: not a bit of her mothers in her.

`Come, come! - the little wench shall come and see you. Ill bring her and Tom some day before he goes to school. You mustnt fret... Ill allays be a good brother to you.

`No: but I hope their brothers ull love the poor things and remember they came o one father and mother: the lads ull never be the poorer for that, said Mrs Moss, flashing out with hurried timidity, like a half-smothered fire.

`No, no; I cant get down - I must be going home again directly, said Mr Tulliver, looking at the distance.

`I know Im behind with the interest, said Mr Moss, `but I was so unlucky wi the wool last year, and what with the Missis being laid up so, things have gone awkarder nor usual.

`No, said Mrs Moss, `but hes only in the potato-field yonders. Georgy, run to the Far Close in a minute and tell father your uncles come. Youll get down, brother, wont you, and take something?

`I dont know who should have money to play with, if it isnt them as can borrow money without paying interest, said Mr Tulliver, who wished to get into a slight quarrel: it was the most natural and easy introduction to calling in money.

If Mrs Moss had been one of the most astute women in the world instead of being one of the simplest, she could have thought of nothing more likely to propitiate her brother than this praise of Maggie. He seldom found any one volunteering praise of `the little wench: it was usually left entirely to himself to insist on her merits. But Maggie always appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Mosss: it was her Alsatia, where she was out of the reach of law - if she upset anything, dirtied her shoes, or tore her frock, these things were matters of course at her aunt Mosss. In spite of himself, Mr Tullivers e九九藏书yes got milder, and he did not look away from his sister as he said,

`No, Gritty, no, said Mr Tulliver, in a gentle tone. `Dont you fret - thats all - Ill make a shift without the money a bit - only you must be as cliver and contriving as you can.

`Thank you for that word, brother, said Mrs Moss, drying her tears; then turning to Lizzy, she said, `Run now, and fetch the coloured egg for cousin Maggie. Lizzy ran in, and quickly reappeared with a small paper parcel.

Mrs Tulliver cried a little in a trickling quiet way as she put on her nightcap; but presently sank into a comfortable sleep, lulled by the thought that she would talk everything over with her sister Pullet tomorrow when she was to take the children to Garum Firs to tea. Not that she looked forward to any distinct issue from that talk, but it seemed impossible that past events should be so obstinate as to remain unmodified when they were complained against.

`Well, Ill just get down and have a bit o talk with you in the garden, said Mr Tulliver, feeling that he should be more likely to show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present.

`Well, if thats what you mean, said Mr Moss, looking blankly before him, `wed better be sold up and ha done with it; I must part wi every head o stock In got, to pay you and the landlord too.

`SUPPOSE sister Glegg should call her money in - it ud be very awkward for you to have to raise five hundred pounds now, said Mrs Tulliver to her husband that evening, as she took a plaintive review of the day. Mrs Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal gold-fish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass. Mrs Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and after running her head against the same resisting medium for thirteen years would go at it again to-day with undulled alacrity.

`Oh... pretty well. Toms going to a new school at Midsummer - a deal of expense to me. Its bad work for me lying out o my money.

`Its boiled hard, brother, and coloured with thrums - very pretty: it was done o purpose for Maggie. Will you please to carry it in your pocket?

This observation of hers tended directly to convince Mr Tulliver that it would not be at all awkward for him to raise five hundred pounds, and when Mrs Tulliver became rather pressing to know how he would raise it without mortgaging the mill and the house which he had said he never would mortgage, since nowadays people were none so ready to lend money without security, Mr Tulliver, getting warm, declared that Mrs Glegg might do as she liked about calling in her money - he should pay it in, whether or not. He was not going to be beholding to his wifes sisters. When a man had married into a family where there was a whole litter of women, he might have plenty to put up with if he choose. But Mr Tulliver did not choose.

`Brother, Im glad to see you, she said, in an affectionate tone. `I didnt look for you today. How do you do?

`I wish youd be so good as let the children come and see their cousins some day. My little uns want to see their cousin Maggie, so as never was. And me her god-mother and so fond of her - theres nobody ud make a bigger fuss with her according to what theyve got. And I know she likes to come - for shes a loving child, and how quick and clever she is, to be sure!

He got down and passed with Mr九_九_藏_书_网 Moss into the garden towards an old yew-tree arbour, while his sister stood tapping her baby on the back and looking wistfully after them.

`Moss says, shes just like what I used to be, said Mrs Moss, `though I was never so quick and fond o the books. But I think my Lizzys like her - shes sharp. Come here, Lizzy my dear, and let your uncle see you: he hardly knows you, you grow so fast.

`Ay, ay, said Mr Tulliver, putting it carefully in his side-pocket. `Good-by.

And so the respectable miller returned along the Basset lanes rather more puzzled than before as to ways and means, but still with the sense of a danger escaped. It had come across his mind that if he were hard upon his sister, it might somehow tend to make Tom hard upon Maggie, at some distant day, when her father was no longer there to take her part; for simple people, like our friend Mr Tulliver, are apt to clothe unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this was his confused way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for `the little wench had given him a new sensibility towards his sister.

`While, do you call it? said Mr Moss, feeling out of breath and injured. `Ive been running all the way. Wont you light, Mr Tulliver?

`Your husband isnt in the house, I suppose? added Mr Tulliver, after a grave pause, during which four children had run out, like chickens whose mother has been suddenly in eclipse behind the hen-coop.

Her husband lay awake rather longer, for he too was thinking of a visit he would pay on the morrow, and his ideas on the subject were not of so vague and soothing a kind as those of his amiable partner.

Mr Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side

Mrs Mosss tears came again at this unexpected kindness, and she could say nothing.

`No, no; good-by, said he, turning his horses head and riding away.

`Ay, ay, Gritty, said the miller, with a new softness in his tone. `But Ive allays done what I could for you, he added, as if vindicating himself from a reproach.

Lizzy, a black-eyed child of seven, looked very shy when her mother drew her forward, for the small Mosses were much in awe of their uncle from Dorlcote Mill. She was inferior enough to Maggie in fire and strength of expression to make the resemblance between the two entirely flattering to Mr Tullivers fatherly love.

`Ay, snarled Mr Tulliver, `theres folks as things ull allays go awkard with: empty sacks ull never stand upright.

`Ah, but they must turn out and fend for themselves, said Mr Tulliver, feeling that his severity was relaxing and trying to brace it by throwing out a wholesome hint. `They mustnt look to hanging on their brothers.

Mr Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbour as he uttered the last sentence and without looking round at Mr Moss went on to the kitchen door where the eldest boy was holding his horse, and his sister was waiting in a state of wondering alarm, which was not without its alleviations, for baby was making pleasant gurgling sounds and performing a great deal of finger practice on the faded face. Mrs Moss had eight children, but could never overcome her regret that the twins had not lived: Mr Moss thought their removal was not without its consolations. `Wont you come in, brother? she said, looking anxiously at her husband, who was walking slowly up, while Mr Tulliver had his foot already in the stirrup.

That arrow went straight to Mr Tullivers heart. He had not a rapid imagination, but the thought of Maggie was very near to him, and he was not long in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side with Toms relation to Maggie. Would the little wench ever be poorly off, and Tom rather hard upon her?

九_九_藏_书_网`Im not denying that, brother, and Im noways ungrateful, said poor Mrs Moss, too fagged by toil and children to have strength left for any pride. `But heres the father. What a while youve been, Moss.

Poor relations are undeniably irritating: their existence is so entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost always very faulty people. Mr Tulliver had succeeded in getting quite as much irritated with Mr Moss as he had desired and he was able to say angrily, rising from his seat,

`The fathers gone to the field again, if you want him, brother.

`Oh... pretty well, Mrs Moss... pretty well, answered the brother, with cool deliberateness, as if it were rather too forward of her to ask that question. She knew at once that her brother was not in a good humour: he never called her Mrs Moss expect when he was angry and when they were in company. But she thought it was in the order of nature that people who were poorly off should be snubbed. Mrs Moss did not take her stand on the equality of the human race: she was a patient, loosely-hung, child-producing woman.

No man could feel more resolute till he got outside the yard-gate and a little way along the deep-rutted lane; but before he reached the next turning, which would take him out of sight of the dilapidated farm-buildings, he appeared to be smitten by some sudden thought, for he checked his horse and made it stand still in the same spot for two or three minutes, during which he turned his head from side to side in a melancholy way, as if he were looking at some painful object on more sides than one. Evidently, after his fit of promptitude, Mr Tulliver was relapsing into the sense that this is a puzzling world. He turned his horse and rode slowly back, giving vent to the climax of feeling which had determined this movement by saying aloud, as he struck his horse,

`And the more there is of em, the more they must love one another, Mrs Moss went on, looking at her children with a didactic purpose. But she turned towards her brother again to say, `Not but what I hope your boy ull allays be good to his sister, though theres but two of em, like you and me, brother.

For Mr Tulliver was in a position neither new nor striking but, like other everyday things, sure to have a cumulative effect that will be felt in the long run: he was held to be a much more substantial man than he really was. And as we are all apt to believe what the world believes about us, it was his habit to think of failure and ruin with the same sort of remote pity with which a spare long-necked man hears that his plethoric short-necked neighbour is stricken with apoplexy. He had been always used to hear pleasant jokes about his advantages as a man who worked his own mill and owned a pretty bit of land; and these jokes naturally kept up his sense that he was a man of considerable substance. They gave a pleasant flavour to his glass on a market-day, and if it had not been for the recurrence of half-yearly payments Mr Tulliver would really have forgotten that there was a mortgage of two thousand pounds on his mill and homestead. That was not altogether his own fault, since one of the thousand pounds was his sisters fortune, which he had had to pay on her marriage, and a man who has neighbours that will go to law with him is not likely to pay off his mortgages, especially if he enjoys the good opinion of acquaintances who want to borrow a hundred pounds on security too lofty to be represented by parchment. Our friend Mr Tulliver had a good-natured fibre in him, and did not like to give harsh refusals even to a sister, who had not only come into the world in that 藏书网superfluous way characteristic of sisters, creating a necessity for mortgages, but had quite thrown herself away in marriage and had crowned her mistakes by having an eighth baby. On this point Mr Tulliver was conscious of being a little weak, but he apologised to himself by saying that poor Gritty had been a good-looking wench before she married Moss - he would sometimes say this even with a slight tremulousness in his voice. But this morning he was in a mood more becoming a man a business, and in the course of his ride along the Basset lanes, with their deep ruts, lying so far away from a market-town that the labour of drawing produce and manure was enough to take away the best part of the profits on such poor land as that parish was made of, he got up a due amount of irritation against Moss as a man without capital, who if murrain and blight were abroad was sure to have his share of them, and who, the more you tried to help him out of the mud, would sink the further in. It would do him good rather than harm, now, if he were obliged to raise this three hundred pounds: it would make him look about him better, and not act so foolishly about his wool this year as he did the last: in fact, Mr Tulliver had been too easy with his brother-in-law, and because he had let the interest run on for two years, Moss was likely enough to think that he should never be troubled about the principal. But Mr Tulliver was determined not to encourage such shuffling people any longer, and a ride along the Basset lanes was not likely to enervate a mans resolution by softening his temper. The deep-trodden hoof-marks made in the muddiest days of winter gave him a shake now and then which suggested a rash but stimulating snarl at the father of lawyers who, whether by means of his hoof or otherwise, had doubtless something to do with this state of the roads; and the abundance of foul land and neglected fences that met his eye, though they made no part of his brother Mosss farm, strongly contributed to his dissatisfaction with that unlucky agriculturist. If this wasnt Mosss fallow, it might have been: Basset was all alike; it was a beggarly parish in Mr Tullivers opinion, and his opinion was certainly not groundless. Basset had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor non-resident landlord, a poor non-resident vicar, and rather less than half a curate, also poor. If any one strongly impressed with the power of the human mind to triumph over circumstances, will contend that the parishioners of Basset might nevertheless have been a very superior class of people, I have nothing to urge against that abstract proposition: I only know that in point of fact the Basset mind was in strict keeping with its circumstances. The muddy lanes, green or clayey, that seemed to the unaccustomed eye to lead nowhere but into each other, did really lead, with patience, to a distant high-road, but there were many feet in Basset which they led more frequently to a centre of dissipation spoken of formally as the `Markis o Granby but among intimates as `Dickisons. A large low room with a sanded floor, a cold scent of tobacco modified by undetected beer-dregs, Mr Dickison leaning against the doorpost with a melancholy pimpled face looking as irrelevant to the daylight as a last nights guttered candle - all this may not seem a very seductive form of temptation; but the majority of men in Basset found it fatally alluring when encountered on their road towards four oclock on a wintry afternoon; and if any wife in Basset wished to indicate that her husband was not a pleasure-seeking man, she could hardly do it more emphatically than by saying th

九*九*藏*书*网

at he didnt spend a shilling at Dickisons from one Whitsuntide to another. Mrs Moss had said so of her husband more than once, when her brother was in a mood to find fault with him, as he certainly was to-day. And nothing could be less pacifying to Mr Tulliver than the behaviour of the farmyard gate, which he no sooner attempted to push open with his riding stick than it acted as gates without the upper hinge are known to do, to the peril of shins, whether equine or human. He was about to get down and lead his horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farmyard, shadowed drearily by the large half-tim-bered buildings, up to the long line of tumble-down dwelling-house standing on a raised causeway, but the timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he had determined on, namely not to get down from his horse during this visit. If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon. Mrs Moss heard the sound of the horses feet and when her brother rode up, was already outside the kitchen door with a half-weary smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her arms. Mrs Mosss face bore a faded resemblance to her brothers: babys little fat hand pressed against her cheek seemed to show more strikingly that the cheek was faded.

Mr Tullivers return into the yard was descried by several young Mosses, who immediately ran in with the exciting news to their mother, so that Mrs Moss was again on the door-step when her brother rode up. She had been crying, but was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and made no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at her, but merely said,

`And hows Mrs Tulliver and the children? said Mrs Moss humbly, not daring to press her invitation.

`Poor little wench! shell have nobody but Tom, belike, when Im gone.

`Ay, theyre a bit alike, he said, looking kindly at the little figure in the soiled pinafore. `They both take after our mother. Youve got enough o gells, Gritty, he added in a tone half compassionate, half reproachful.

`Well, you must do as you can. I cant find money for everybody else as well as myself. I must look to my own business and my own family. I cant lie out o my money any longer. You must raise it as quick as you can.

`Well, I dont know what fault youve got to find wi me, Mr Tulliver, said Mr Moss deprecatingly, `I know there isnt a day-labourer works harder.

`Why, youve got wheat again in that Corner Close, I see? and never a bit o dressing on it. Youll do no good with it this year.

`Whats the use o that, said Mr Tulliver, sharply, `when a man marries ands got no capital to work his farm, but his wifes bit o fortin? I was against it from the first; but youd neither of you listen to me. And I cant lie out o My money any longer; for Ive got to pay five hundred o Mrs Gleggs, and there ull be Tom an expense to me, as I should find myself short, even saying Id got back all as is my own. You must look about and see how you can pay me the three hundred pounds.

Mr Tulliver gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked it and said angrily, `Stand still with you! much to the astonishment of that innocent animal.

Their entrance into the yew-tree arbour surprised several fowls, that were recreating themselves by scratching deep holes in the dusty ground, and at once took flight with much pother and cackling. Mr Tulliver sat down on the bench, and tapping the ground curiously here and there with his stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened the conversation by observing, with something like a snarl in his tone,