`You talk o' 'cuteness, Mr Tulliver,' she observed as she sat down, `but I'm sure the child's half a idiot i' some things, for if I send her up-stairs to fetch anything she forgets what she's gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all the while I'm waiting for her down-stairs. That niver run i' my family, thank God, no more nor a brown skin as makes her look like a mulatter. I don't like to fly i' the face o' Providence, but it seems hard as I should have but one gell, an' her so comical.'

`Pooh, nonsense!' said Mr Tulliver, `she's a straight black-eyed wench as anybody need wish to see. I don't know i' what she's behind other folk's children; an' she can read almost as well as the parson.'

`But her hair won't curl all I can do with it and she's so franzy about having it put i' paper, an' I've such work as never was to make her stand and have it pinched with th'irons.'

`Cut it off - cut if off short,' said the father, rashly.

`How can you talk so, Mr Tulliver? She's too big a gell, gone nine, and tall of her age - to have her hair cut short; an' there's her cousin Lucy's got a row o' curls round her head, an' not a hair out o' place. It seems hard as my sister Deane should have that pretty child; I'm sure Lucy takes more after me nor my own child does. Maggie, Maggie,' continued the mother, in a tone of half-coaxing fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered the room, `where's the use o' my telling you to keep away from the water? You'll tumble in and be drownded some day, an' then you'll be sorry you didn't do as mother told you.'

Maggie's hair, as she threw off her bonnet, painfully confirmed her mother's accusation: Mrs Tulliver, desiring her daughter to have a curled crop, `like other folk's children,' had had it cut too short in front to be pushed behind the ears, and as it was usually straight an hour after it had been taken out of paper, Maggie was incessantly tossing her head to keep the dark heavy locks out of her gleaming black eyes - an action which gave her very much the air of a small Shetland pony.

`O dear, O dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin' of, to throw your bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, there's a good gell, an' let your hair be brushed, an' put your other pinafore on, an' change your shoes - do, for shame; an'come an' go on with your patchwork, like a little lady.'

`O mother,' said Maggie, in a vehemently cross tone, `I don't want to do my patchwork.'

`What, not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your aunt Glegg?'

`It's foolish work,' said Maggie, with a toss of her mane, - `tearing things to pieces to sew 'em together again. And I don't want to do anything for my aunt Glegg - I don't like her.'

Exit Maggie, dragging her bonnet by the string, while Mr Tulliver laughs audibly.

`I wonder at you, as you'll laugh at her, Mr Tulliver,' said the mother, with lymphatic fretfulness in her tone. `You encourage her i' naughtiness. An' her aunts will have it as it's me spoils her.'

Mrs Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered person - never cried when she was a baby on any slighter ground than hunger and pins, and from the cradle upwards had been healthy, fair plump, and dull-witted, in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when their strong-limbed strong-willed boys got a little too old to do without clothing. I think they must have been given to feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more and more ineffectual.