Mrs Tulliver was mute, feeling herself a truly wretched mother. As usual, the thought pressed upon her that people would think she had done something wicked to deserve her maternal troubles, while Mrs Pullet began to give elaborate directions to Sally how to guard the premises from serious injury in the course of removing the dirt. Meantime tea was to be brought in by the cook, and the two naughty children were to have theirs in an ignominious manner in the kitchen. Mrs Tulliver went out to speak to these naughty children, supposing them to be close at hand; but it was not until after some search that she found Tom leaning with rather a hardened, careless air against the white paling of the poultry-yard, and lowering his piece of string on the other side as a means of exasperating the turkey-cock. “Tom, you naughty boy, where’s your sister?” said Mrs Tulliver, in a distressed voice. “I don’t know,” said Tom; his eagerness for justice on Maggie had diminished since he had seen clearly that it could hardly be brought about without the injustice of some blame on his own conduct. “Why, where did you leave her?” said the mother, looking round. “Sitting under the tree, against the pond,” said Tom, apparently indifferent to everything but the string and the turkey-cock. “Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could you think o’ going to the pond, and taking your sister where there was dirt? You know she’ll do mischief if there’s mischief to be done.” It was Mrs Tulliver’s way, if she blamed Tom, to refer his misdemeanour, somehow or other, to Maggie. The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond roused an habitual fear in Mrs Tulliver’s mind, and she mounted the horse-block to satisfy herself by a sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked—not very quickly—on his way toward her. “They’re such children for the water, mine are,” she said aloud, without reflecting that there was no one to hear her; “they’ll be brought in dead and drownded some day. I wish that river was far enough.” But when she not only failed to discern Maggie, but presently saw Tom returning from the pool alone, this hovering fear entered and took complete possession of her, and she hurried to meet him. “Maggie’s nowhere about the pond, mother,” said Tom; “she’s gone away.” You may conceive the terrified search for Maggie, and the difficulty of convincing her mother that she was not in the pond. Mrs Pullet observed that the child might come to a worse end if she lived, there was no knowing; and Mr Pullet, confused and overwhelmed by this revolutionary aspect of things,—the tea deferred and the poultry alarmed by the unusual running to and fro,—took up his spud as an instrument of search, and reached down a key to unlock the goose-pen, as a likely place for Maggie to lie concealed in.