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When Maggie and Tom came in from the garden with their father and their Uncle Glegg, they found that Aunt Deane and Cousin Lucy had also arrived. Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very carelessly, and coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl, rushed at once to Lucy, who was standing by her mother’s knee.

Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed. Everything about her was neat–her little round neck with the row of coral beads; her little straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather darker than her curls to match her hazel eyes, which looked up with shy pleasure at Maggie, taller by the head, though scarcely a year older.

“O Lucy,” burst out Maggie, after kissing her, “you’ll stay with Tom and me, won’t you?–Oh, kiss her, Tom.”

Tom, too, had come up to Lucy, but he was not going to kiss her–no; he came up to her with Maggie because it seemed easier, on the whole, than saying, “How do you do?” to all those aunts and uncles.

“Heyday!” said Aunt Glegg loudly. “Do little boys and gells come into a room without taking notice o’ their uncles and aunts? That wasn’t the way when I was a little gell.”

“Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears,” said Mrs. Tulliver. She wanted also to whisper to Maggie a command to go and have her hair brushed.

“Well, and how do you do? And I hope you’re good children–are you?” said Aunt Glegg, in the same loud way, as she took their hands, hurting them with her large rings, and kissing their cheeks, much against their desire. “Look up, Tom, look up. Boys as go to boarding-schools should hold their heads up. Look at me now.” Tom would not do so, and tried to draw his hand away. “Put your hair behind your ears, Maggie, and keep your frock on your shoulder.”

Aunt Glegg always spoke to them in this loud way, as if she thought them quite deaf, or perhaps rather silly.

“Well, my dears,” said Aunt Pullet sadly, “you grow wonderful fast.–I doubt they’ll outgrow their strength,” she added, looking over their heads at their mother. “I think the gell has too much hair. I’d have it thinned and cut shorter, sister, if I was you. It isn’t good for her health. It’s that as makes her skin so brown, I shouldn’t wonder.–Don’t you think so, Sister Deane?”

“I can’t say, I’m sure, sister,” said Mrs. Deane.

“No, no,” said Mr. Tulliver, “the child’s healthy enough–there’s nothing ails her. There’s red wheat as well as white, for that matter, and some like the dark grain best. But it ‘ud be as well if Bessy ‘ud have the child’s hair cut, so as it ‘ud lie smooth.”

Maggie now wished to learn from her Aunt Deane whether she would leave Lucy behind to stay at the mill. Aunt Deane would hardly ever let Lucy come to see them, to Maggie’s great regret.

“You wouldn’t like to stay behind without mother, should you, Lucy?” she said to her little daughter.

“Yes, please, mother,” said Lucy timidly, blushing very pink all over her little neck.

“Well done, Lucy!–Let her stay, Mrs. Deane, let her stay,” said Mr. Deane, a large man, who held a silver snuff-box very tightly in his hand, and now and then exchanged a pinch with Mr. Tulliver.

“Maggie,” said Mrs. Tulliver, beckoning Maggie to her, and whispering in her ear, as soon as this point of Lucy’s staying was settled, “go and get your hair brushed–do, for shame. I told you not to come in without going to Martha first; you know I did.”

“Tom, come out with me,” whispered Maggie, pulling his sleeve as she passed him; and Tom followed willingly enough.

“Come upstairs with me, Tom,” she whispered, when they were outside the door. “There’s something I want to do before dinner.”