“Why, I think you’re fonder of me than
Tom is,” said Maggie, rather sorrowfully.
Then, wondering how she could convince Philip that
she could like him just as well, although he was crooked,
she said:
“Should you like me to kiss you, as I do Tom?
I will, if you like.”
“Yes, very much; nobody kisses me.”
Maggie put her arm round his neck and kissed him quite
earnestly.
“There now,” she said, “I shall
always remember you, and kiss you when I see you again,
if it’s ever so long. But I’ll go
now, because I think Mr. Askern’s done with
Tom’s foot.”
When their father came the second time, Maggie said
to him, “Oh, father, Philip Wakem is so very
good to Tom; he is such a clever boy, and I do
love him. And you love him too, Tom, don’t
you? Say you love him,” she added entreatingly.
Tom colored a little as he looked at his father, and
said: “I sha’n’t be friends
with him when I leave school, father; but we’ve
made it up now, since my foot has been bad, and he’s
taught me to play at draughts, and I can beat him.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Tulliver, “if
he’s good to you, try and make him amends, and
be good to him. He’s a poor crooked
creature, and takes after his dead mother. But
don’t you be getting too thick with him; he’s
got his father’s blood in him too. Ay, ay,
the gray colt may chance to kick like his black sire.”
The jarring natures of the two boys effected what
Mr. Tulliver’s admonition alone might have failed
to effect; in spite of Philip’s new kindness,
and Tom’s answering regard in this time of his
trouble, they never became close friends. When
Maggie was gone, and when Tom by-and-by began to walk
about as usual, the friendly warmth that had been
kindled by pity and gratitude died out by degrees,
and left them in their old relation to each other.
Philip was often peevish and contemptuous; and Tom’s
more specific and kindly impressions gradually melted
into the old background of suspicion and dislike toward
him as a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of
a rogue. If boys and men are to be welded together
in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made
of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder
when the heat dies out.
The Golden Gates Are Passed
So Tom went on even to the fifth half-year—till
he was turned sixteen—at King’s Lorton,
while Maggie was growing with a rapidity which her
aunts considered highly reprehensible, at Miss Firniss’s
boarding-school in the ancient town of Laceham on the
Floss, with cousin Lucy for her companion. In
her early letters to Tom she had always sent her love
to Philip, and asked many questions about him, which
were answered by brief sentences about Tom’s
toothache, and a turf-house which he was helping to
build in the garden, with other items of that kind.
She was pained to hear Tom say in the holidays that
