The Complete Novels in One Volume. George Eliot

no,” Lucy interposed. “I must forbid your plunging Maggie in books. I shall never get her away from them; and I want her to have delicious do-nothing days, filled with boating and chatting and riding and driving; that is the holiday she needs.”

      “Apropos!” said Stephen, looking at his watch. “Shall we go out for a row on the river now? The tide will suit for us to the Tofton way, and we can walk back.”

      That was a delightful proposition to Maggie, for it was years since she had been on the river. When she was gone to put on her bonnet, Lucy lingered to give an order to the servant, and took the opportunity of telling Stephen that Maggie had no objection to seeing Philip, so that it was a pity she had sent that note the day before yesterday. But she would write another to-morrow and invite him.

      “I’ll call and beat him up to-morrow,” said Stephen, “and bring him with me in the evening, shall I? My sisters will want to call on you when I tell them your cousin is with you. I must leave the field clear for them in the morning.”

      “Oh yes, pray bring him,” said Lucy. “And you will like Maggie, sha’n’t you?” she added, in a beseeching tone. “Isn’t she a dear, noble-looking creature?”

      “Too tall,” said Stephen, smiling down upon her, “and a little too fiery. She is not my type of woman, you know.”

      Gentlemen, you are aware, are apt to impart these imprudent confidences to ladies concerning their unfavorable opinion of sister fair ones. That is why so many women have the advantage of knowing that they are secretly repulsive to men who have self-denyingly made ardent love to them. And hardly anything could be more distinctively characteristic of Lucy than that she both implicitly believed what Stephen said, and was determined that Maggie should not know it. But you, who have a higher logic than the verbal to guide you, have already foreseen, as the direct sequence to that unfavorable opinion of Stephen’s, that he walked down to the boathouse calculating, by the aid of a vivid imagination, that Maggie must give him her hand at least twice in consequence of this pleasant boating plan, and that a gentleman who wishes ladies to look at him is advantageously situated when he is rowing them in a boat. What then? Had he fallen in love with this surprising daughter of Mrs. Tulliver at first sight? Certainly not. Such passions are never heard of in real life. Besides, he was in love already, and half-engaged to the dearest little creature in the world; and he was not a man to make a fool of himself in any way. But when one is five-and-twenty, one has not chalk-stones at one’s finger-ends that the touch of a handsome girl should be entirely indifferent. It was perfectly natural and safe to admire beauty and enjoy looking at it,—at least under such circumstances as the present. And there was really something very interesting about this girl, with her poverty and troubles; it was gratifying to see the friendship between the two cousins. Generally, Stephen admitted, he was not fond of women who had any peculiarity of character, but here the peculiarity seemed really of a superior kind, and provided one is not obliged to marry such women, why, they certainly make a variety in social intercourse.

      Maggie did not fulfil Stephen’s hope by looking at him during the first quarter of an hour; her eyes were too full of the old banks that she knew so well. She felt lonely, cut off from Philip,—the only person who had ever seemed to love her devotedly, as she had always longed to be loved. But presently the rhythmic movement of the oars attracted her, and she thought she should like to learn how to row. This roused her from her reverie, and she asked if she might take an oar. It appeared that she required much teaching, and she became ambitious. The exercise brought the warm blood into her cheeks, and made her inclined to take her lesson merrily.

      “I shall not be satisfied until I can manage both oars, and row you and Lucy,” she said, looking very bright as she stepped out of the boat. Maggie, we know, was apt to forget the thing she was doing, and she had chosen an inopportune moment for her remark; her foot slipped, but happily Mr. Stephen Guest held her hand, and kept her up with a firm grasp.

      “You have not hurt yourself at all, I hope?” he said, bending to look in her face with anxiety. It was very charming to be taken care of in that kind, graceful manner by some one taller and stronger than one’s self. Maggie had never felt just in the same way before.

      When they reached home again, they found uncle and aunt Pullet seated with Mrs. Tulliver in the drawing-room, and Stephen hurried away, asking leave to come again in the evening.

      “And pray bring with you the volume of Purcell that you took away,” said Lucy. “I want Maggie to hear your best songs.”

      Aunt Pullet, under the certainty that Maggie would be invited to go out with Lucy, probably to Park House, was much shocked at the shabbiness of her clothes, which when witnessed by the higher society of St. Ogg’s, would be a discredit to the family, that demanded a strong and prompt remedy; and the consultation as to what would be most suitable to this end from among the superfluities of Mrs. Pullet’s wardrobe was one that Lucy as well as Mrs. Tulliver entered into with some zeal. Maggie must really have an evening dress as soon as possible, and she was about the same height as aunt Pullet.

      “But she’s so much broader across the shoulders than I am, it’s very ill-convenient,” said Mrs. Pullet, “else she might wear that beautiful black brocade o’ mine without any alteration; and her arms are beyond everything,” added Mrs. Pullet, sorrowfully, as she lifted Maggie’s large round arm, “She’d never get my sleeves on.”

      “Oh, never mind that, aunt; send us the dress,” said Lucy. “I don’t mean Maggie to have long sleeves, and I have abundance of black lace for trimming. Her arms will look beautiful.”

      “Maggie’s arms are a pretty shape,” said Mrs. Tulliver. “They’re like mine used to be, only mine was never brown; I wish she’d had our family skin.”

      “Nonsense, aunty!” said Lucy, patting her aunt Tulliver’s shoulder, “you don’t understand those things. A painter would think Maggie’s complexion beautiful.”

      “Maybe, my dear,” said Mrs. Tulliver, submissively. “You know better than I do. Only when I was young a brown skin wasn’t thought well on among respectable folks.”

      “No,” said uncle Pullet, who took intense interest in the ladies’ conversation as he sucked his lozenges. “Though there was a song about the ‘Nut-brown Maid’ too; I think she was crazy,—crazy Kate,—but I can’t justly remember.”

      “Oh dear, dear!” said Maggie, laughing, but impatient; “I think that will be the end of my brown skin, if it is always to be talked about so much.”