Why should he be?
Even Hotspur, one would think, must have been patient in his slippers on a warm hearth, taking copious snuff, and sipping gratuitous brandy-and-water.
"There's a thing I've got i' my head," said Mr.Tulliver at last, in rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his head and looked steadfastly at his companion.
"Ah!" said Mr.Riley, in a tone of mild interest.

He was a man with heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same under all circumstances.

This immovability of face, and the habit of taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly oracular to Mr.Tulliver.
"It's a very particular thing," he went on; "it's about my boy Tom." At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was seated on a low stool close by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her heavy hair back and looked up eagerly.

There were few sounds that roused Maggie when she was dreaming over her book, but Tom's name served as well as the shrillest whistle; in an instant she was on the watch, with gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mischief, or at all events determined to fly at any one who threatened it toward Tom.
"You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsummer," said Mr.
Tulliver; "he's comin' away from the 'cademy at Lady-day, an' I shall let him run loose for a quarter; but after that I want to send him to a downright good school, where they'll make a scholard of him." "Well," said Mr.Riley, "there's no greater advantage you can give him than a good education.

Not," he added, with polite significance,--"not that a man can't be an excellent miller and farmer, and a shrewd, sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the schoolmaster." "I believe you," said Mr.Tulliver, winking, and turning his head on one side; "but that's where it is.