I shall give Tom an eddication an' put him to a business, as he may make a nest for himself, an' not want to push me out o' mine.

Pretty well if he gets it when I'm dead an' gone.
I sha'n't be put off wi' spoon-meat afore I've lost my teeth." This was evidently a point on which Mr.Tulliver felt strongly; and the impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis to his speech showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterward in a defiant motion of the head from side to side, and an occasional "Nay, nay," like a subsiding growl.
These angry symptoms were keenly observed by Maggie, and cut her to the quick.

Tom, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his father out of doors, and of making the future in some way tragic by his wickedness.

This was not to be borne; and Maggie jumped up from her stool, forgetting all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang within the fender, and going up between her father's knees, said, in a half-crying, half-indignant voice,-- "Father, Tom wouldn't be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn't." Mrs.Tulliver was out of the room superintending a choice supper-dish, and Mr.Tulliver's heart was touched; so Maggie was not scolded about the book.

Mr.Riley quietly picked it up and looked at it, while the father laughed, with a certain tenderness in his hard-lined face, and patted his little girl on the back, and then held her hands and kept her between his knees.
"What! they mustn't say any harm o' Tom, eh ?" said Mr.Tulliver, looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye.