“Maggie,” said Philip one day, “if you had had a brother like me, do you think you should have loved him as well as Tom?”

“Oh, yes, better,” she answered immediately.  “No, not better; because I don’t think I could love you better than Tom.  But I should be so sorry—­so sorry for you.”

Philip coloured.  He had meant to imply, would she love him as well in spite of his deformity, and yet when she alluded to it so plainly he winced under her pity.  Maggie, young as she was, felt her mistake.

“But you are so very clever, Philip, and you can play and sing,” she added quickly.  “I wish you were my brother.  I’m very fond of you.”

“But you’ll go away soon, and go to school, Maggie, and then you’ll forget all about me, and not care for me any more.”

“Oh, no, I shan’t forget you, I’m sure.”  And Maggie put her arm round his neck, and kissed him quite earnestly.

III.—­The Downfall

When Tom had turned sixteen, and Maggie, three years younger, was at boarding school, came the downfall of the Tullivers.  A long and expensive law-suit concerning rights of water, brought by Mr. Tulliver, ended in defeat.  Wakem was his opponent’s lawyer.

Maggie broke the news to Tom.  Not only would mill and lands and everything be lost, and nothing left, but their father had fallen off his horse, and knew nobody, and seemed to have lost his senses.

“They say Mr. Wakem has got a mortgage or something on the land, Tom,” said Maggie, on their way home from King’s Lorton.  “It was the letter with that news in it that made father ill, they think.”

“I believe that scoundrel’s been planning all along to ruin my father,” said Tom, leaping from the vaguest impressions to a definite conclusion.  “I’ll make him feel for it when I’m a man.  Mind you never speak to Philip again!”

For more than two months Mr. Tulliver lay ill in his room, oblivious to all that was taking place around him.  From time to time recognition came to him of his wife and family, but there was no remembrance of recent events.

The mill and land of the Tullivers were sold to Wakem the lawyer, and the bulk of their household goods were disposed of by public auction; but the Tullivers were not turned out of Dorlcote Mill.  And, indeed, when Mr. Tulliver, known to be a man of proud honesty, was once more able to be up and about, it was proposed that he should remain and accept employment as manager of the mill for Mr. Wakem.

It was with difficulty that poor Tulliver could bring himself to accept the situation, but he saw the possibility, by much pinching, of saving money out of the thirty shillings a week salary promised by Wakem, and paying a second dividend to his creditors.  The strongest influence of all was the love of the old premises where he had run about when he was a boy, just as Tom had done after him.

Tom, who had at once applied to his Uncle Deane, partner in a wealthy merchant’s business, for work, and was now earning a pound a week, had protested against entertaining the proposition; he shouldn’t like his father to be under Wakem; he thought it would look nothing but mean spirited.