The Mill on the Floss George Eliot (ereader android .txt) đ
- Author: George Eliot
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âTchuh!â said Mr. Tulliver. âIt takes a big loaf when thereâs many to breakfast. What signifies your sistersâ bits oâ money when theyâve got half-a-dozen nevvies and nieces to divide it among? And your sister Deane wonât get âem to leave all to one, I reckon, and make the country cry shame on âem when they are dead?â
âI donât know what she wonât get âem to do,â said Mrs. Tulliver, âfor my children are so awkâard wiâ their aunts and uncles. Maggieâs ten times naughtier when they come than she is other days, and Tom doesnât like âem, bless him!â âthough itâs more natâral in a boy than a gell. And thereâs Lucy Deaneâs such a good childâ âyou may set her on a stool, and there sheâll sit for an hour together, and never offer to get off. I canât help loving the child as if she was my own; and Iâm sure sheâs more like my child than sister Deaneâs, for sheâd allays a very poor colour for one of our family, sister Deane had.â
âWell, well, if youâre fond oâ the child, ask her father and mother to bring her with âem. And wonât you ask their aunt and uncle Moss too, and some oâ their children?â
âOh, dear, Mr. Tulliver, why, thereâd be eight people besides the children, and I must put two more leaves iâ the table, besides reaching down more oâ the dinner-service; and you know as well as I do as my sisters and your sister donât suit well together.â
âWell, well, do as you like, Bessy,â said Mr. Tulliver, taking up his hat and walking out to the mill. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs. Tulliver on all points unconnected with her family relations; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeedâ âas much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so wellâ ânot at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries; so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family: the hatbands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the illness or trouble was the suffererâs own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanour, and the only bitter circumstance attending this superiority was a painful inability to approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in âstrange houses,â always ate dry bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having no confidence in the butter, and thinking that the preserves had probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were some Dodsons less like the family than others, that was admitted; but in so far as they were âkin,â they were of necessity better than those who were âno kin.â And it is remarkable that while no individual Dodson was satisfied with any other individual Dodson, each was satisfied, not only with him or herself, but with the Dodsons collectively. The feeblest member of a familyâ âthe one who has the least characterâ âis often the merest epitome of the family habits and traditions; and Mrs. Tulliver was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small-beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale: and though she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sisterly reproaches, it was not in Mrs. Tulliver to be an innovator on the family ideas. She was thankful to have been a Dodson, and to have one child who took after her own family, at least in his features and complexion, in liking salt and in eating beans, which a Tulliver never did.
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 comingâ 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
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