You've a memory for my pills and draughts, wonderful - I'll allays say that of you - but you're lost among the keys.' This gloomy prospect of the confusion that would ensue on her decease was very affecting to Mrs Pullet.
`You carry it too far, Sophy - that locking in and out,' said Mrs Glegg, in a tone of some disgust at this folly.`You go beyond your own family.
There's nobody can say I don't lock up; but I do what's reasonable, and no more.And as for the linen, I shall look out what's serviceable, to make a present of to my nevvie: I've got cloth as has never been whittened, better worth having than other people's fine holland; and I hope he'll lie down in it and think of his aunt.'
Tom thanked Mrs Glegg, but evaded any promise to meditate nightly on her virtues; and Mr Glegg effected a diversion for him by asking about Mr Deane's intentions concerning steam.
Lucy had had her far-sighted views in begging Tom to come on Sindbad.
It appeared, when it was time to go home, that the manservant was to ride the horse, and cousin Tom was to drive home his mother and Lucy.`You must sit by yourself, aunty,' said that contriving young lady, `because I must sit by Tom; I've a great deal to say to him.'
In the eagerness of her affectionate anxiety for Maggie, Lucy could not persuade herself to defer a conversation about her with Tom, who, she thought, with such a cup of joy before him as this rapid fulfilment of his wish about the Mill, must become pliant and flexible.Her nature supplied her with no key to Tom's, and she was puzzled as well as pained to notice the unpleasant change on his countenance when she gave him the history of the way in which Philip had used his influence with his father.She had counted on this revelation as a great stroke of policy, which was to turn Tom's heart towards Philip at once, and besides that, prove that the elder Wakem was ready to receive Maggie with all the honours of a daughter-in-law.
Nothing was wanted, then, but for dear Tom, who always had that pleasant smile when he looked at cousin Lucy, to turn completely round, say the opposite of what he had always said before, and declare that he, for his part, was delighted that all the old grievances should be healed and that Maggie should have Philip with all suitable despatch: in cousin Lucy's opinion nothing could be easier.
But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that create severity - strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control and a disposition to exert control over others - prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which we call truth.Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye - however it may come, these minds will give it a habitation: it is something to assert strongly and bravely, something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious right:
it is at once a staff and a baton.Every prejudice that will answer these purposes is self-evident.Our good upright Tom Tulliver's mind was of this class: his inward criticism of his father's faults did not prevent him from adopting his father's prejudice; it was a prejudice against a man of lax principle and lax life, and it was a meeting-point for all the disappointed feelings of family and personal pride.Other feelings added their force to produce Tom's bitter repugnance to Philip and to Maggie's union with him; and notwithstanding Lucy's power over her strong-willed cousin, she got nothing but a cold refusal ever to sanction such a marriage: `but of course Maggie could do as she liked - she had declared her determination to be independent.For Tom's part, he held himself bound by his duty to his father's memory, and by every manly feeling, never to consent to any relation with the Wakems.'
Thus, all that Lucy had effected by her zealous mediation was to fill Tom's mind with the expectation that Maggie's perverse resolve to go into a situation again, would presently metamorphose itself, as her resolves were apt to do, into something equally perverse, but entirely different - a marriage with Philip Wakem.