 when he had thought of asking Riley's advice about a tutor
for Tom. Mr. Stelling's eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such an
offhand, matter-of-fact way - answering every difficult slow remark of Mr.
Tulliver's with, »I see, my good sir, I see;« »To be sure, to be sure;« »You
want your son to be a man who will make his way in the world,« - that Mr.
Tulliver was delighted to find in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so
applicable to the everyday affairs of this life. Except Counsellor Wylde, whom
he had heard at the last sessions, Mr. Tulliver thought the Rev. Mr. Stelling
was the shrewdest fellow he had ever met with - not unlike Wylde, in fact: he
had the same way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. Mr.
Tulliver was not by any means an exception in mistaking brazenness for
shrewdness: most laymen thought Stelling shrewd, and a man of remarkable powers
generally: it was chiefly by his clerical brethren that he was considered rather
a dull fellow. But he told Mr. Tulliver several stories about »Swing« and
incendiarism, and asked his advice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular
and judicious a manner, with so much polished glibness of tongue, that the
miller thought, here was the very thing he wanted for Tom. He had no doubt this
first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of information, and knew exactly
what Tom must learn in order to become a match for the lawyers - which poor Mr.
Tulliver himself did not know, and so was necessarily thrown for self-direction
on this wide kind of inference. It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have
known much more highly-instructed persons than he make inferences quite as wide,
and not at all wiser.
    As for Mrs. Tulliver - finding that Mrs. Stelling's views as to the airing
of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger in a growing boy, entirely
coincided with her own; moreover, that Mrs. Stelling, though so young a woman,
and only anticipating her second confinement, had gone through very nearly the
same experience as herself with regard to the behaviour and fundamental
character of the monthly nurse - she expressed great contentment to her husband,
when they drove away, at leaving Tom with a woman who, in spite of her youth,
seemed quite sensible and motherly, and asked advice as prettily as could be.
    »They must be very well off
