“Oh, father,” said Eppie, when the bridal party returned from the church, “what a pretty home ours is!  I think nobody could be happier than we are!”

* * * * *

The Mill on the Floss

In “The Mill on the Floss,” published in 1860, George Eliot went to her own early life for the chief characters in the story, and in the relations of Tom and Maggie Tulliver we get a picture of the youth of Mary Ann Evans and her brother Isaac.  Lord Lytton objected that Maggie was too passive in the scene at Red Deeps, and that the tragedy of the flood was not adequately prepared.  To this criticism George Eliot answered, “Now that the defect is suggested to me, if the book were still in manuscript I should alter, or rather expand, that scene at Red Deeps.”  She also admitted that there was “a want of proportionate fulness” in the conclusion.  But, with all its faults, “The Mill on the Floss” deserves the reputation it has won.  The reception of the story at first was disappointing, and we find the authoress telling her publisher that “she does not want to see any newspaper articles.”  But the book made its way, and prepared an ever-growing public for “Silas Marner.”

I.—­The Tullivers of Dorlcote Mill

“What I want, you know,” said Mr. Tulliver, “what I want is to give Tom a good eddication—­an eddication as’ll be a bread to him.  I mean to put him to a downright good school at midsummer.  The two years at th’ academy ‘ud ha’ done well enough if I’d meant to make a miller and farmer of him, but I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard.  It ’ud be a help to me wi’ these lawsuits, and arbitrations, and things.  I wouldn’t make a downright lawyer o’ the lad—­I should be sorry for him to be a raskill—­but a sort of engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one o’ them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high stool.  They’re pretty nigh all one, and they’re not far off being even wi’ the law, I believe; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i’ the face as hard as one cat looks another. He’s none frightened at him.”

Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blonde, comely woman, nearly forty years old.

“Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best. I’ve no objections.  But if Tom’s to go to a new school, I should like him to go where I can wash him and mend him, else he might as well have calico as linen.  And then, when the box is goin’ backwards and forwards, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork-pie, or an apple.”

“Well, well, we won’t send him out o’ reach o’ the carrier’s cart, if other things fit in,” said Mr. Tulliver.  “Riley’s as likely a man as any to know o’ some school; he’s had schooling himself, an’ goes about to all sorts o’ places—­arbitratin’ and vallyin’, and that.”

So a day or two later Mr. Riley, the auctioneer, came to Dorlcote Mill, and stayed the night, the better that Mr. Tulliver, who was slow at coming to a point, might consult him on the all-important subject of his boy.