The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (best self help books to read TXT) đ
- Author: George Eliot
- Performer: 0141439629
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In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Tom, and he was as far from appreciating his âkinâ on the motherâs side as Maggie herself, generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the most portable food, when he received timely warning that his aunts and uncles were coming,âa moral symptom from which his aunt Glegg deduced the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard on Maggie that Tom always absconded without letting her into the secret, but the weaker sex are acknowledged to be serious impedimenta in cases of flight.
On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there were such various and suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air. Tom and Maggie made several inroads into the kitchen, and, like other marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of booty.
âTom,â said Maggie, as they sat on the boughs of the elder-tree, eating their jam-puffs, âshall you run away tomorrow?â
âNo,â said Tom, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eying the third, which was to be divided between them,ââno, I shaânât.â
âWhy, Tom? Because Lucyâs coming?â
âNo,â said Tom, opening his pocket-knife and holding it over the puff, with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.) âWhat do I care about Lucy? Sheâs only a girl,âshe canât play at bandy.â
âIs it the tipsy-cake, then?â said Maggie, exerting her hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward toward Tom with her eyes fixed on the hovering knife.
âNo, you silly, thatâll be good the day after. Itâs the pudden. I know what the puddenâs to be,âapricot roll-upâO my buttons!â
With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff, and it was in two, but the result was not satisfactory to Tom, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last he said,â
âShut your eyes, Maggie.â
âWhat for?â
âYou never mind what for. Shut âem when I tell you.â
Maggie obeyed.
âNow, whichâll you have, Maggie,âright hand or left?â
âIâll have that with the jam run out,â said Maggie, keeping her eyes shut to please Tom.
âWhy, you donât like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to you fair, but I shaânât give it you without. Right or left,âyou choose, now. Ha-a-a!â said Tom, in a tone of exasperation, as Maggie peeped. âYou keep your eyes shut, now, else you shaânât have any.â
Maggieâs power of sacrifice did not extend so far; indeed, I fear she cared less that Tom should enjoy the utmost possible amount of puff, than that he should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite close, till Tom told her to âsay which,â and then she said, âLeft hand.â
âYouâve got it,â said Tom, in rather a bitter tone.
âWhat! the bit with the jam run out?â
âNo; here, take it,â said Tom, firmly, handing, decidedly the best piece to Maggie.
âOh, please, Tom, have it; I donât mindâI like the other; please take this.â
âNo, I shaânât,â said Tom, almost crossly, beginning on his own inferior piece.
Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Tom had finished first, and had to look on while Maggie ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Maggie didnât know Tom was looking at her; she was seesawing on the elder-bough, lost to almost everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.
âOh, you greedy thing!â said Tom, when she had swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of view before and after oneâs own share of puff is swallowed.
Maggie turned quite pale. âOh, Tom, why didnât you ask me?â
âI wasnât going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit.â
âBut I wanted you to have it; you know I did,â said Maggie, in an injured tone.
âYes, but I wasnât going to do what wasnât fair, like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you donât punch him for it; and if you choose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if I go halves, Iâll go âem fair; only I wouldnât be a greedy.â
With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough, and threw a stone with a âhoigh!â as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent dog accepted Tomâs attention with as much alacrity as if he had been treated quite generously.
But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery which distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for Tom. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Maggieâs palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldnât have it, and she ate it without thinking; how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes; but by that time resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation, and she jumped from her bough to look for Tom. He was no longer in the paddock behind the rickyard; where was he likely to be gone, and Yap with him? Maggie ran to the high bank against the great holly-tree, where she could see far away toward the Floss. There was Tom; but her heart sank again as she saw how far off he was on his way to the great river, and that he had another companion besides Yap,ânaughty Bob Jakin, whose official, if not natural, function of frightening the birds was just now at a standstill. Maggie felt sure that Bob was wicked, without very distinctly knowing why; unless it was because Bobâs mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, who lived at a queer round house down the river; and once, when Maggie and Tom had wandered thither, there rushed out a brindled dog that wouldnât stop barking; and when Bobâs mother came out after it, and screamed above the barking to tell them not to be frightened, Maggie thought she was scolding them fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Maggie thought it very likely that the round house had snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom; for she had seen Bob take off his cap to show Tom a little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of young bats: altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats; and to crown all, when Tom had Bob for a companion, he didnât mind about Maggie, and would never let her go with him.
It must be owned that Tom was fond of Bobâs company. How could it be otherwise? Bob knew, directly he saw a birdâs egg, whether it was a swallowâs, or a tomtitâs, or a yellow-hammerâs; he found out all the waspsâ nests, and could set all sort of traps; he could climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedgehogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after the sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering incognito.
Such qualities in an inferior, who could always be treated with authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for Tom; and every holiday-time Maggie was sure to have days of grief because he had gone off with Bob.
Well! there was no hope for it; he was gone now, and Maggie could think of no comfort but to sit down by the hollow, or wander by the hedgerow, and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just what she should like it to be.
Maggieâs was a troublous life, and this was the form in which she took her opium.
Meanwhile Tom, forgetting all about Maggie and the sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Bob, whom he had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catching in a neighboring barn. Bob knew all about this particular affair, and spoke of the sport with an enthusiasm which no one who is not either divested of all manly feeling, or pitiably ignorant of rat-catching, can fail to imagine. For a person suspected of preternatural wickedness, Bob was really not so very villanous-looking; there was even something agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close-curled border of red hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the convenience of wading on the slightest notice; and his virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably âvirtue in rags,â which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit overpaid, is notoriously likely to remain
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