`No, no,' said Mr Tulliver, `the child's healthy enough - there's nothing ails her. There's red wheat as well as white, for that matter, and some like the dark grain best. But it 'ud be as well if Bessy 'ud have the child's hair cut, so as it 'ud lie smooth.'
A dreadful resolve was gathering in Maggie's breast, but it was arrested by the desire to know from her aunt Deane whether she would leave Lucy behind: aunt Deane would hardly ever let Lucy come to see them. After various reasons for refusal, Mrs Deane appealed to Lucy herself.
`You wouldn't like to stay behind without mother, should you, Lucy?'
`Yes, please, mother,' said Lucy, timidly, blushing very pink all over her little neck.
`Well done, Lucy! Let her stay, Mrs Deane, let her stay,' said Mr Deane, a large but alert-looking man with a type of physique to be seen in all ranks of English society - bald crown, red whiskers, full forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see nobleman like Mr Deane, and you may see grocers or day-labourers like him; but the keenness of his brown eyes was less common than his contour. He held a silver snuff-box very tightly in his hand, and now and then exchanged a pinch with Mr Tulliver, whose box was only silver-mounted, so that it was naturally a joke between them that Mr Tulliver wanted to exchange snuff-boxes also. Mr Deane's box had been given him by the superior partners in the firm to which he belonged, at the same time that they gave him a share in the business in acknowledgment of his valuable services as manager. No man was thought more highly of in St Ogg's than Mr Deane, and some persons were even of opinion that Miss Susan Dodson, who was held to have made the worst match of all the Dodson sisters, might one day ride in a better carriage and live in a better house even than her sister Pullet. There was no knowing where a man would stop, who had got his foot into a great mill-owning, ship-owning business like that of Guest & Co. with a banking concern attached. And Mrs Deane, as her intimate female friends observed, was proud and having enough: she wouldn't let her husband stand still in the world for want of spurring.
`Maggie,' said Mrs Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her and whispering in her ear as soon as this point of Lucy's staying was settled, `go and get your hair brushed - do, for shame. I told you not to come in without going to Martha first, you know I did.'
`Tom, come out with me,' whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she passed him, and Tom followed willingly enough.
`Come upstairs with me, Tom,' she whispered when they were outside the door. `There's something I want to do before dinner.'
`There's no time to play at anything before dinner,' said Tom, whose imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.
`O yes, there's time for this - do come, Tom.'
Tom followed Maggie upstairs into her mother's room, and saw her go at once to a drawer from which she took out a large pair of scissors.
`What are they for, Maggie?' said Tom, feeling his curiosity awakened.
Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight across the middle of her forehead.
`O, my buttons, Maggie - you'll catch it!' exclaimed Tom. `You'd better not cut any more off.'
Snip! went the great scissors again while Tom was speaking, and he couldn't help feeling it was rather good fun: Maggie would look so queer.
`Here Tom, cut it behind for me,' said Maggie, excited by her own daring and anxious to finish the deed.