`Thank you for that word, brother,' said Mrs Moss, drying her tears; then turning to Lizzy, she said, `Run now, and fetch the coloured egg for cousin Maggie.' Lizzy ran in, and quickly reappeared with a small paper parcel.

`It's boiled hard, brother, and coloured with thrums - very pretty: it was done o' purpose for Maggie. Will you please to carry it in your pocket?'

`Ay, ay,' said Mr Tulliver, putting it carefully in his side-pocket. `Good-by.'

And so the respectable miller returned along the Basset lanes rather more puzzled than before as to ways and means, but still with the sense of a danger escaped. It had come across his mind that if he were hard upon his sister, it might somehow tend to make Tom hard upon Maggie, at some distant day, when her father was no longer there to take her part; for simple people, like our friend Mr Tulliver, are apt to clothe unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this was his confused way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for `the little wench' had given him a new sensibility towards his sister.