Tom Comes Home in The Mill on the Floss :: The Mill on the Floss George Eliot Essays

Tom Comes Home in The plodding on the FlossTOM was to arrive early in the afternoon, and thither was another fluttering heart besides Maggies when it was late enough for the pop mutilate of the gig wheels to be expected for if Mrs Tulliver had a strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came - that quick well-heeled bowling of the gig wheels - and in spite of the wind which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs Tullivers curls and cap-strings, she came outside the door, and flush held her hand on Maggies offending head, forgetting all the griefs of the morning. There he is, my sweet crevice But, Lord ha mercy, hes got never a collar on its been lost on the road, Ill be bound, and spoilt the set. Mrs Tulliver stood with her arms open Maggie jumped first on whizz leg and then on the other while Tom descended from the gig and said, with masculine reticence as to the tender emotions, Hallo Yap, what, are you there? Nevertheless, he s ubmitted to be kissed willingly enough, though Maggie hung on his neck in quite an a strangling fashion, while his blue-grey eyes wandered towards the croft and the lambs and the river where he promised himself that he would acquire to fish the first thing to-morrow morning. He was one of those lads that grow everyplace in England, and, at twelve or thirteen years of age, guess as much alike as goslings - a lad with light brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eye-brows - a physiognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything but the generic character of boyhood as different as possible from poor Maggies phiz, which Nature seemed to have moulded and sinister with the about decided intention. But that same Nature has the deep craft which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they give the axe see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident pro phecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies that she seems to eddy off by the gross, she conceals some of her most rigid inflexible purposes, some of her most unmodifiable characters, and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this pink and unclouded bit of masculinity with the indeterminate features.