 to speak of Blucher and the Prussians, who, as Mr.
Tulliver had heard from a person of particular knowledge in that matter, had
come up in the very nick of time; though here there was a slight dissidence, Mr.
Deane remarking that he was not disposed to give much credit to the Prussians, -
the build of their vessels, together with the unsatisfactory character of
transactions in Dantzic beer, inclining him to form rather a low view of
Prussian pluck generally. Rather beaten on this ground, Mr. Tulliver proceeded
to express his fears that the country could never again be what it used to be;
but Mr. Deane, attached to a firm of which the returns were on the increase,
naturally took a more lively view of the present; and had some details to give
concerning the state of the imports, especially in hides and spelter, which
soothed Mr. Tulliver's imagination by throwing into more distant perspective the
period when the country would become utterly the prey of Papists and Radicals,
and there would be no more chance for honest men.
    Uncle Pullet sat by and listened with twinkling eyes to these high matters.
He didn't understand politics himself - thought they were a natural gift - but
by what he could make out, this Duke of Wellington was no better than he should
be.
 

                                  Chapter VIII

                       Mr. Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side

»Suppose sister Glegg should call her money in - it 'ud be very awkward for you
to have to raise five hundred pounds now,« said Mrs. Tulliver to her husband
that evening, as she took a plaintive review of the day.
    Mrs. Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in
all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which
drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired. Some minds are
wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal gold-fish
apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a
straight line beyond the encircling glass. Mrs. Tulliver was an amiable fish of
this kind, and, after running her head against the same resisting medium for
thirteen years, would go at it again to-day with undulled alacrity.
    This observation of hers tended directly to convince Mr. Tulliver that it
would not be at all awkward for him to raise five hundred pounds; and when Mrs.
Tulliver became rather pressing to know how he would raise it without mortgaging
the mill and the house which he had said he never would mortgage, since nowadays
people were none so ready to lend money without security
