Mr. Kipling has written a poem in praise of Jane Austen which you will find in his book called _Debits and Credits_. He pictures Miss Austen being met at heaven's gate by some of the great novelists: Good Sir Walter, you know who that is; Henry, this is a great English novelist whose name was Henry Fielding; Tobias, another English novelist, Tobias Smollett; Miguel of Spain, this is Cervantes. From this short poem you can judge how highly other writers rank Jane Austen. Tom and Maggie Tulliver are brother and sister. They appear in George Eliot's novel _The Mill on the Floss_. Tom and Maggie serve, perhaps, as the best known instance in fiction of a study of the relations between brother and sister. Certainly, we often think of Tom and Maggie, and always we think of them as boy and girl, brother and sister. Tom is very much of a boy. He is an important person in the family, and he is to succeed his father at Dorlcote Mill, which is on the river Floss. {158} Is not this a beautiful description of Dorlcote Mill? George Eliot must have been writing of a mill that she knew and loved: "And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing February it is pleasant to look at,--perhaps the chill damp season adds a charm to the trimly kept comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little withy plantation, and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in front of the house. As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world above." Maggie Tulliver is a wonderful study of a girl, later of a young woman. No one surely can help loving Maggie, who adored Tom with all her heart, who was often in disgrace with her mother, as for instance, when she cut off her hair, who spent a great part of her time reading books, and who was her father's favourite. Tom was rather hard on Maggie. When they grew up there was a sad time when Tom refused to have anything to do with her. Yet Maggie always loved Tom best. At the end of the story, there is a flood. {159} The river rises so high that everyone's life is in danger. And Maggie comes alone by herself in a boat to rescue Tom.