CHAPTER IV.
Tom Is Expected It was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Tom home from the academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs.Tulliver said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet.

Maggie took the opposite view very strongly, and it was a direct consequence of this difference of opinion that when her mother was in the act of brushing out the reluctant black crop Maggie suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near, in the vindictive determination that there should be no more chance of curls that day.
"Maggie, Maggie!" exclaimed Mrs.Tulliver, sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, "what is to become of you if you're so naughty?
I'll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when they come next week, and they'll never love you any more.

Oh dear, oh dear! look at your clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom.

Folks 'ull think it's a judgment on me as I've got such a child,--they'll think I've done summat wicked." Before this remonstrance was finished, Maggie was already out of hearing, making her way toward the great attic that run under the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath.

This attic was Maggie's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes.