The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot [rocket ebook reader txt] 📗

dignity. Stephen was aware that he had sense and independence enough to choose the wife who was likely to make him happy, unbiassed by any indirect considerations. He meant to choose Lucy; she was a little darling, and exactly the sort of woman he had always admired. II First Impressions

“He is very clever, Maggie,” said Lucy. She was kneeling on a footstool at Maggie’s feet, after placing that dark lady in the large crimson-velvet chair. “I feel sure you will like him. I hope you will.”

“I shall be very difficult to please,” said Maggie, smiling, and holding up one of Lucy’s long curls, that the sunlight might shine through it. “A gentleman who thinks he is good enough for Lucy must expect to be sharply criticised.”

“Indeed, he’s a great deal too good for me. And sometimes, when he is away, I almost think it can’t really be that he loves me. But I can never doubt it when he is with me, though I couldn’t bear anyone but you to know that I feel in that way, Maggie.”

“Oh, then, if I disapprove of him you can give him up, since you are not engaged,” said Maggie, with playful gravity.

“I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon,” said Lucy, too thoroughly preoccupied to notice Maggie’s joke; “and I should like everything to go on for a long while just as it is. Sometimes I am quite frightened lest Stephen should say that he has spoken to papa; and from something that fell from papa the other day, I feel sure he and Mr. Guest are expecting that. And Stephen’s sisters are very civil to me now. At first, I think they didn’t like his paying me attention; and that was natural. It does seem out of keeping that I should ever live in a great place like the Park House, such a little insignificant thing as I am.”

“But people are not expected to be large in proportion to the houses they live in, like snails,” said Maggie, laughing. “Pray, are Mr. Guest’s sisters giantesses?”

“Oh no; and not handsome⁠—that is, not very,” said Lucy, half-penitent at this uncharitable remark. “But he is⁠—at least he is generally considered very handsome.”

“Though you are unable to share that opinion?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lucy, blushing pink over brow and neck. “It is a bad plan to raise expectation; you will perhaps be disappointed. But I have prepared a charming surprise for him; I shall have a glorious laugh against him. I shall not tell you what it is, though.”

Lucy rose from her knees and went to a little distance, holding her pretty head on one side, as if she had been arranging Maggie for a portrait, and wished to judge of the general effect.

“Stand up a moment, Maggie.”

“What is your pleasure now?” said Maggie, smiling languidly as she rose from her chair and looked down on her slight, aerial cousin, whose figure was quite subordinate to her faultless drapery of silk and crape.

Lucy kept her contemplative attitude a moment or two in silence, and then said⁠—

“I can’t think what witchery it is in you, Maggie, that makes you look best in shabby clothes; though you really must have a new dress now. But do you know, last night I was trying to fancy you in a handsome, fashionable dress, and do what I would, that old limp merino would come back as the only right thing for you. I wonder if Marie Antoinette looked all the grander when her gown was darned at the elbows. Now, if I were to put anything shabby on, I should be quite unnoticeable. I should be a mere rag.”

“Oh, quite,” said Maggie, with mock gravity. “You would be liable to be swept out of the room with the cobwebs and carpet-dust, and to find yourself under the grate, like Cinderella. Mayn’t I sit down now?”

“Yes, now you may,” said Lucy, laughing. Then, with an air of serious reflection, unfastening her large jet brooch, “But you must change brooches, Maggie; that little butterfly looks silly on you.”

“But won’t that mar the charming effect of my consistent shabbiness?” said Maggie, seating herself submissively, while Lucy knelt again and unfastened the contemptible butterfly. “I wish my mother were of your opinion, for she was fretting last night because this is my best frock. I’ve been saving my money to pay for some lessons; I shall never get a better situation without more accomplishments.”

Maggie gave a little sigh.

“Now, don’t put on that sad look again,” said Lucy, pinning the large brooch below Maggie’s fine throat. “You’re forgetting that you’ve left that dreary schoolroom behind you, and have no little girls’ clothes to mend.”

“Yes,” said Maggie. “It is with me as I used to think it would be with the poor uneasy white bear I saw at the show. I thought he must have got so stupid with the habit of turning backward and forward in that narrow space that he would keep doing it if they set him free. One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.”

“But I shall put you under a discipline of pleasure that will make you lose that bad habit,” said Lucy, sticking the black butterfly absently in her own collar, while her eyes met Maggie’s affectionately.

“You dear, tiny thing,” said Maggie, in one of her bursts of loving admiration, “you enjoy other people’s happiness so much, I believe you would do without any of your own. I wish I were like you.”

“I’ve never been tried in that way,” said Lucy. “I’ve always been so happy. I don’t know whether I could bear much trouble; I never had any but poor mamma’s death. You have been tried, Maggie; and I’m sure you feel for other people quite as much as I do.”

“No, Lucy,” said Maggie, shaking her head slowly, “I don’t enjoy their happiness as you do, else I should be more contented. I do feel for them