“You see, I want to put him to a new school at midsummer,” said Mr. Tulliver, when the topic had been reached.  “I want to send him to a downright good school, where they’ll make a scholard of him.  I don’t mean Tom to be a miller an’ farmer.  I see no fun i’ that.  I shall give Tom an eddication and put him to a business as he may make a nest for himself, an’ not want to push me out o’ mine.”

At the sound of her brother’s name, Maggie, the second and only other child of the Tullivers, who was seated on a low stool close by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, looked up eagerly.  Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his father out of doors.  This was not to be borne, and Maggie jumped up from her stool, and going up between her father’s knees, said, in a half-crying, half-indignant voice, “Father, Tom wouldn’t be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn’t.”

Mr. Tulliver’s heart was touched.

“What!  They mustn’t say any harm o’ Tom, eh?” he said, looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye.  Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr. Riley, “She understands what one’s talking about so as never was.  And you should hear her read—­straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand.  But it’s bad—­it’s bad.  A woman’s no business wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to trouble, I doubt.  It’s a pity, but what she’d been the lad—­she’d ha’ been a match for the lawyers, she would.”

Mr. Riley took a pinch of snuff before he said, “But your lad’s not stupid, is he?  I saw him, when I was here last, busy making fishing-tackle; he seemed quite up to it.”

“Well, he isn’t not to say stupid; he’s got a notion o’ things out o’ door, an’ a sort o’ commonsense, as he’d lay hold o’ things by the right handle.  But he’s slow with his tongue, you see, and reads but poorly, and can’t abide the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me, an’ as shy as can be wi’ strangers.  Now, what I want is to send him to a school where they’ll make him a bit nimble with his tongue and his pen, to make a smart chap of him.  I want my son to be even wi’ these fellows as have got the start o’ me with schooling.”

The talk ended in Mr. Riley recommending a country parson named Stelling as a suitable tutor for Tom, and Mr. Tulliver decided that his son should go to Mr. Stelling at King’s Lorton, fifteen miles from Dorlcote Mill.

II.—­School-Time

Tom Tulliver’s sufferings during the first quarter he was at King’s Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter Stelling, were rather severe.  It had been very difficult for him to reconcile himself to the idea that his school-time was to be prolonged, and that he was not to be brought up to his father’s business, which he had always thought extremely pleasant, for it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and going to market.

Mr. Stelling was not a harsh-tempered or unkind man—­quite the contrary, but he thought Tom a stupid boy, and determined to develop his powers through Latin grammar and Euclid to the best of his ability.