In Chapter II. we are introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver talking by the fire in the left-hand corner of their cosy English home, and I must read a page or two of their conversation before bringing Maggie on the stage, if only to show the intense individuality of the latter by making the reader wonder how such an individualism could ever have been evolved from any such precedent conditions as those of Mr. and Mrs Tulliver. "What I want, you know," said Mr. Tulliver,--
"What I want is to give Tom a good eddication--an eddication as'll be bread to him. That was what I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave th' academy at Ladyday. 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 schollard, so as he might be up to the tricks o' these fellows a stalk 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 raskell--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 out-lay, only for a big watch-chain, and a high stool. They're putty 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."
Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blonde comely woman, in a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it was since fan-shaped caps were worn--they must be so near coming in again. At that time, when Mrs. Tulliver was nearly forty, they were new at St. Ogg's, and considered sweet things).
"Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best; _I've_ no objections. But hadn't I better kill a couple o' fowl and have th' aunts and uncles to dinner next week, so as you may hear what sister Glegg and sister Pullet have got to say about it? There's a couple o' fowl _wants_ killing!"