“Come, come, my wench,” said her father, soothingly, putting his arm round her, “never mind; you was i’ the right to cut it off if it plagued you; give over crying; father’ll take your part.” Delicious words of tenderness! Maggie never forgot any of these moments when her father “took her part”; she kept them in her heart, and thought of them long years after, when every one else said that her father had done very ill by his children. “How your husband does spoil that child, Bessy!” said Mrs Glegg, in a loud “aside,” to Mrs Tulliver. “It’ll be the ruin of her, if you don’t take care. _My_ father never brought his children up so, else we should ha’ been a different sort o’ family to what we are.” Mrs Tulliver’s domestic sorrows seemed at this moment to have reached the point at which insensibility begins. She took no notice of her sister’s remark, but threw back her capstrings and dispensed the pudding, in mute resignation. With the dessert there came entire deliverance for Maggie, for the children were told they might have their nuts and wine in the summer-house, since the day was so mild; and they scampered out among the budding bushes of the garden with the alacrity of small animals getting from under a burning glass. Mrs Tulliver had her special reason for this permission: now the dinner was despatched, and every one’s mind disengaged, it was the right moment to communicate Mr Tulliver’s intention concerning Tom, and it would be as well for Tom himself to be absent. The children were used to hear themselves talked of as freely as if they were birds, and could understand nothing, however they might stretch their necks and listen; but on this occasion Mrs Tulliver manifested an unusual discretion, because she had recently had evidence that the going to school to a clergyman was a sore point with Tom, who looked at it as very much on a par with going to school to a constable. Mrs Tulliver had a sighing sense that her husband would do as he liked, whatever sister Glegg said, or sister Pullet either; but at least they would not be able to say, if the thing turned out ill, that Bessy had fallen in with her husband’s folly without letting her own friends know a word about it. “Mr Tulliver,” she said, interrupting her husband in his talk with Mr Deane, “it’s time now to tell the children’s aunts and uncles what you’re thinking of doing with Tom, isn’t it?” “Very well,” said Mr Tulliver, rather sharply, “I’ve no objections to tell anybody what I mean to do with him. I’ve settled,” he added, looking toward Mr Glegg and Mr Deane,—“I’ve settled to send him to a Mr Stelling, a parson, down at King’s Lorton, there,—an uncommon clever fellow, I understand, as’ll put him up to most things.”