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Tom could not restrain himself, and gave Maggie two smart slaps on the arm as he ran to pick up Lucy, who lay crying helplessly. Maggie retreated to the roots of a tree a few yards off, and looked on. Why should she be sorry? Tom was very slow to forgive her, however sorry she might have been.

“I shall tell mother, you know, Miss Mag,” said Tom, as soon as Lucy was up and ready to walk away. It was not Tom’s practice to “tell,” but here justice clearly demanded that Maggie should be visited with the utmost punishment.

“Sally,” said Tom, when they reached the kitchen door–“Sally, tell mother it was Maggie pushed Lucy into the mud.”

Sally, as we have seen, lost no time in presenting Lucy at the parlour door.

“Goodness gracious!” Aunt Pullet exclaimed, after giving a scream; “keep her at the door, Sally! Don’t bring her off the oilcloth, whatever you do.”

“Why, she’s tumbled into some nasty mud,” said Mrs. Tulliver, going up to Lucy.

“If you please, ‘um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed her in,” said Sally. “Master Tom’s been and said so; and they must ha’ been to the pond, for it’s only there they could ha’ got into such dirt.”

“There it is, Bessy; it’s what I’ve been telling you,” said Mrs. Pullet. “It’s your children; there’s no knowing what they’ll come to.”

Mrs. Tulliver went out to speak to these naughty children, supposing them to be close at hand; but it was not until after some search that she found Tom leaning with rather a careless air against the white paling of the poultry-yard, and lowering his piece of string on the other side as a means of teasing the turkey-cock.

“Tom, you naughty boy, where’s your sister?” said Mrs. Tulliver in a distressed voice.

“I don’t know,” said Tom.

“Why, where did you leave her?” said his mother, looking round.

“Sitting under the tree against the pond,” said Tom.

“Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could you think o’ going to the pond, and taking your sister where there was dirt? You know she’ll do mischief, if there’s mischief to be done.”

The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond roused a fear in Mrs. Tulliver’s mind, and she mounted the horse-block to satisfy herself by a sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked–not very quickly–on his way towards her.

“They’re such children for the water, mine are,” she said aloud, without reflecting that there was no one to hear her; “they’ll be brought in dead and drownded some day. I wish that river was far enough.”

But when she not only failed to see Maggie, but presently saw Tom returning from the pond alone, she hurried to meet him.

“Maggie’s nowhere about the pond, mother,” said Tom; “she’s gone away.”

Chapter VIII.

MAGGIE AND THE GIPSIES.

After Tom and Lucy had walked away, Maggie’s quick mind formed a plan which was not so simple as that of going home. No; she would run away and go to the gipsies, and Tom should never see her any more. She had been often told she was like a gipsy, and “half wild;” so now she would go and live in a little brown tent on the common.

The gipsies, she considered, would gladly receive her, and pay her much respect on account of her superior knowledge. She had once mentioned her views on this point to Tom, and suggested that he should stain his face brown, and they should run away together; but Tom rejected the scheme with contempt, observing that gipsies were thieves, and hardly got anything to eat, and had nothing to drive but a donkey. To-day, however, Maggie thought her misery had reached a pitch at which gipsydom was her only refuge, and she rose from her seat on the roots of the tree with the sense that this was a great crisis in her life.