 brave, we must
expect to find many good women timid: too timid even to believe in the
correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a
minority. And the men at St Ogg's were not all brave by any means: some of them
were even fond of scandal - and to an extent that might have given their
conversation an effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by
masculine jokes, and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual
hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the masculine mind at St Ogg's
that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment of each other.
    And thus every direction in which Dr Kenn had turned in the hope of
procuring some kind recognition and some employment for Maggie, proved a
disappointment to him. Mrs. James Torry could not think of taking Maggie as a
nursery governess, even temporarily - a young woman about whom »such things had
been said,« and about whom »gentlemen joked;« and Miss Kirke, who had a spinal
complaint, and wanted a reader and companion, felt quite sure that Maggie's mind
must be of a quality with which she, for her part, could not risk any contact.
Why did not Miss Tulliver accept the shelter offered her by her aunt Glegg? - it
did not become a girl like her to refuse it. Or else, why did she not go out of
the neighbourhood, and get a situation where she was not known? (It was not,
apparently, of so much importance that she should carry her dangerous tendencies
into strange families unknown at St Ogg's.) She must be very bold and hardened
to wish to stay in a parish where she was so much stared at and whispered about.
    Dr Kenn, having great natural firmness, began, in the presence of this
opposition, as every firm man would have done, to contract a certain strength of
determination over and above what would have been called forth by the end in
view. He himself wanted a daily governess for his younger children; and though
he had hesitated in the first instance to offer this position to Maggie, the
resolution to protest with the utmost force of his personal and priestly
character against her being crushed and driven away by slander, was now
decisive. Maggie gratefully accepted an employment that gave her duties as well
as a support: her days would be filled now, and solitary evenings would be a
welcome rest. She no longer needed the sacrifice her mother made in staying with
her, and Mrs. Tulliver was persuaded to
