are looking mild reproach at him from between their
blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in
that awful manner as if they needed that hint!
See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope
toward the bridge, with all the more energy because
they are so near home. Look at their grand shaggy
feet that seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient
strength of their necks, bowed under the heavy collar,
at the mighty muscles of their struggling haunches!
I should like well to hear them neigh over their hardly
earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist
necks freed from the harness, dipping their eager
nostrils into the muddy pond. Now they are on
the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace,
and the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the
turning behind the trees.
Now I can turn my eyes toward the mill again, and
watch the unresting wheel sending out its diamond
jets of water. That little girl is watching it
too; she has been standing on just the same spot at
the edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge.
And that queer white cur with the brown ear seems
to be leaping and barking in ineffectual remonstrance
with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous because his
playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement.
It is time the little playfellow went in, I think;
and there is a very bright fire to tempt her:
the red light shines out under the deepening gray
of the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off
resting my arms on the cold stone of this bridge....
Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been
pressing my elbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming
that I was standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote
Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years
ago. Before I dozed off, I was going to tell you
what Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver were talking about, as
they sat by the bright fire in the left-hand parlor,
on that very afternoon I have been dreaming of.
Chapter II
Mr. Tulliver, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution
about Tom
“What I want, you know,” said Mr. Tulliver,—“what
I want is to give Tom a good eddication; an eddication
as’ll be a bread to him. That was what
I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave
the academy at Lady-day. I mean to put him to
a downright good school at Midsummer. The two
years at th’ academy ‘ud ha’ done
well enough, if I’d meant to make a miller and
farmer of him, for he’s had a fine sight more
schoolin’ nor I ever got. All the
learnin’ my father ever paid for was
a bit o’ birch at one end and the alphabet at
th’ other. But I should like Tom to be
a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the tricks
o’ these fellows as talk fine and write with
a flourish. It ‘ud be a help to me wi’
these lawsuits, and arbitrations, and things.
I wouldn’t make a downright lawyer o’ the
lad,—I should be sorry for him to be a
raskill,—but a sort o’ engineer, or
a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley,
or one o’ them smartish businesses as are all
profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain
and a high stool. They’re pretty nigh all
one, and they’re not far off being even wi’
the law, I believe; for Riley looks Lawyer
Wakem i’ the face as hard as one cat looks another.
He’s none frightened at him.”
