Maggie jumped up to kiss Tom as he entered, with strong feeling, at this first meeting since the prospect of returning to the Mill had been opened to him, and she kept his hand, leading him to the chair by her side. To have no cloud between herself and Tom was still a perpetual yearning in her, that had its root deeper than all change. He smiled at her very kindly this evening and said, `Well, Magsie, how's aunt Moss?'

`Come, come, sir,' said Mr Glegg, putting out his hand. `Why, you're such a big man, you carry all before you, it seems. You're come into your luck a good deal earlier than us old folks did - but I wish you joy, I wish you joy. You'll get the Mill all for your own again, some day, I'll be bound. You won't stop half-way up the hill.'

`But I hope he'll bear in mind as it's his mother's family as he owes it to,' said Mrs Glegg. `If he hadn't had them to take after, he'd ha' been poorly off. There was never any failures, nor lawing, nor wastefulness in our family - nor dying without wills--'

`No, nor sudden deaths,' said aunt Pullet. `Allays the doctor called in. But Tom had the Dodson skin - I said that from the first. And I don't know what you mean to do, sister Glegg, but I mean to give him a table cloth of all my three biggest sizes but one, besides sheets. I don't say what more I shall do, but that I shall do, and if I should die to-morrow, Mr Pullet, you'll bear it in mind - though you'll be blundering with the keys, and never remember as that on the third shelf o' the left hand wardrobe, behind the night- caps with the broad ties - not the narrow-frilled uns - is the key o' the drawer in the Blue Room, where the key o' the Blue Closet is. You'll make a mistake and I shall niver be worthy to know it. You've a memory for my pills and draughts, wonderful - I'll allays say that of you - but you're lost among the keys.' This gloomy prospect of the confusion that would ensue on her decease was very affecting to Mrs Pullet.

`You carry it too far, Sophy - that locking in and out,' said Mrs Glegg, in a tone of some disgust at this folly. `You go beyond your own family. There's nobody can say I don't lock up; but I do what's reasonable, and no more. And as for the linen, I shall look out what's serviceable, to make a present of to my nevvie: I've got cloth as has never been whittened, better worth having than other people's fine holland; and I hope he'll lie down in it and think of his aunt.'

Tom thanked Mrs Glegg, but evaded any promise to meditate nightly on her virtues; and Mr Glegg effected a diversion for him by asking about Mr Deane's intentions concerning steam.

Lucy had had her far-sighted views in begging Tom to come on Sindbad. It appeared, when it was time to go home, that the manservant was to ride the horse, and cousin Tom was to drive home his mother and Lucy. `You must sit by yourself, aunty,' said that contriving young lady, `because I must sit by Tom; I've a great deal to say to him.'

In the eagerness of her affectionate anxiety for Maggie, Lucy could not persuade herself to defer a conversation about her with Tom, who, she thought, with such a cup of joy before him as this rapid fulfilment of his wish about the Mill, must become pliant and flexible. Her nature supplied her with no key to Tom's, and she was puzzled as well as pained to notice the unpleasant change on his countenance when she gave him the history of the way in which Philip had used his influence with his father. She had counted on this revelation as a great stroke of policy, which was to turn Tom's heart towards Philip at once, and besides that, prove that the elder Wakem was ready to receive Maggie with all the honours of a daughter- in-law. Nothing was wanted, then, but for dear Tom, who always had that pleasant smile when he looked at cousin Lucy, to turn completely round, say the opposite of what he had always said before, and declare that he, for his part, was delighted that all the old grievances should be healed and that Maggie should have Philip with all suitable despatch: in cousin Lucy's opinion nothing could be easier.

But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that create severity - strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control and a disposition to exert control over others - prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which we call truth. Let