 Maggie hated
blame: she had been blamed all her life, and nothing had come of it but evil
tempers. Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving
remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable her to do
or bear anything for his sake.
    Tom was a little shocked at Maggie's outburst - telling him as well as his
mother what it was right to do! She ought to have learned better than have those
hectoring, assuming manners, by this time. But he presently went into his
father's room, and the sight there touched him in a way that effaced the
slighter impressions of the previous hour. When Maggie saw how he was moved, she
went to him and put her arm round his neck as he sat by the bed, and the two
children forgot everything else in the sense that they had one father and one
sorrow.
 

                                  Chapter III

                               The Family Council

It was at eleven o'clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles came to hold
their consultation. The fire was lighted in the large parlour, and poor Mrs.
Tulliver, with a confused impression that it was a great occasion, like a
funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels, and unpinned the curtains, adjusting
them in proper folds - looking round and shaking her head sadly at the polished
tops and legs of the tables, which sister Pullet herself could not accuse of
insufficient brightness.
    Mr. Deane was not coming - he was away on business; but Mrs. Deane appeared
punctually in that handsome new gig with the head to it, and the livery-servant
driving it, which had thrown so clear a light on several traits in her character
to some of her female friends in St Ogg's. Mr. Deane had been advancing in the
world as rapidly as Mr. Tulliver had been going down in it; and in Mrs. Deane's
house the Dodson linen and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordinate
position, as a mere supplement to the handsomer articles of the same kind,
purchased in recent years: a change which had caused an occasional coolness in
the sisterly intercourse between her and Mrs. Glegg, who felt that Susan was
getting »like the rest,« and there would soon be little of the true Dodson
spirit surviving except in herself, and, it might be hoped, in those nephews who
supported the Dodson name on the family land, far away in the Wolds. People who
live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our
own eyes; and it seems superfluous, when we consider
