`Well, if I may be allowed to speak, and it's seldom as I am,' said Mrs Glegg, with a tone of bitter meaning, `I should like to know what good is to come to the boy, by bringin' him up above his fortin.'
`Why,' said Mr Tulliver, not looking at Mrs Glegg, but at the male part of his audience, `you see, I've made up my mind not to bring Tom up to my own business. I've had my thoughts about it all along, and I made up my mind by what I saw with Garnett and his son. I mean to put him to some business, as he can go into without capital, and I want to give him an eddication as he'll be even wi' the lawyers and folks, and put me up to a notion now an' then.'
Mrs Glegg emitted a long sort of guttural sound with closed lips that smiled in mingled pity and scorn.
`It 'ud be a fine deal better for some people,' she said, after that introductory note, `if they'd let the lawyers alone.'
`Is he at the head of a grammar school, then, this clergyman - such as that at Market Bewley?' said Mr Deane.
`No - nothing o' that,' said Mr Tulliver. `He won't take more than two or three pupils - and so he'll have the more time to attend to 'em, you know.'
`Ah, and get his eddication done the sooner; they can't learn much at a time when there's so many of 'em,' said uncle Pullet, feeling that he was getting quite an insight into this difficult matter.
`But he'll want the more pay, I doubt,' said Mr Glegg.
`Ay, ay, a cool hundred a year - that's all,' said Mr Tulliver, with some pride at his own spirited course. `But then, you know, it's an investment, like; Tom's eddication 'ull be so much capital to him.'
`Ay, there's something in that,' said Mr Glegg. `Well, well, neighbour Tulliver, you may be right, you may be right:
"When land is gone and money's spent, Then learning is most excellent."
I remember seeing those two lines wrote on a window at Buxton. But us that have got no learning had better keep our money, eh, neighbour Pullet?' Mr Glegg rubbed his knees and looked very pleasant.
`Mr Glegg, I wonder at you,' said his wife. `It's very unbecoming in a man o' your age and belongings.'
`What's unbecoming, Mrs G.?' said Mr Glegg, winking pleasantly at the company. `My new blue coat as I've got on?'
`I pity your weakness, Mr Glegg. I say, it's unbecoming to be making a joke when you see your own kin going headlongs to ruin.'
`If you mean me by that,' said Mr Tulliver, considerably nettled, `You needn't trouble yourself to fret about me. I can manage my own affairs without troubling other folks.'
`Bless me,' said Mr Deane, Judiciously introducing a new idea, `why, now I come to think of it, somebody said Wakem was going to send his son - the deformed lad - to a clergyman, didn't they, Susan?' (appealing to his wife).
`I can give no account of it, I'm sure,' said Mrs Deane, closing her lips very tightly again. Mrs Deane was not a woman to take part in a scene where missiles were flying.
`Well,' said Mr Tulliver, speaking all the more cheerfully that Mrs Glegg might see he didn't mind her, `if Wakem thinks o' sending his son to a clergyman, depend on it I shall make no mistake i' sending Tom to