Mrs.
Tulliver had a sighing sense that her husband would do as he liked, whatever sister Glegg said, or sister Pullet either; but at least they would not be able to say, if the thing turned out ill, that Bessy had fallen in with her husband's folly without letting her own friends know a word about it.
"Mr.Tulliver," she said, interrupting her husband in his talk with Mr.Deane, "it's time now to tell the children's aunts and uncles what you're thinking of doing with Tom, isn't it ?" "Very well," said Mr.Tulliver, rather sharply, "I've no objections to tell anybody what I mean to do with him.

I've settled," he added, looking toward Mr.Glegg and Mr.Deane,--"I've settled to send him to a Mr.Stelling, a parson, down at King's Lorton, there,--an uncommon clever fellow, I understand, as'll put him up to most things." There was a rustling demonstration of surprise in the company, such as you may have observed in a country congregation when they hear an allusion to their week-day affairs from the pulpit.

It was equally astonishing to the aunts and uncles to find a parson introduced into Mr.Tulliver's family arrangements.

As for uncle Pullet, he could hardly have been more thoroughly obfuscated if Mr.Tulliver had said that he was going to send Tom to the Lord Chancellor; for uncle Pullet belonged to that extinct class of British yeoman who, dressed in good broadcloth, paid high rates and taxes, went to church, and ate a particularly good dinner on Sunday, without dreaming that the British constitution in Church and State had a traceable origin any more than the solar system and the fixed stars.
It is melancholy, but true, that Mr.Pullet had the most confused idea of a bishop as a sort of a baronet, who might or might not be a clergyman; and as the rector of his own parish was a man of high family and fortune, the idea that a clergyman could be a schoolmaster was too remote from Mr.Pullet's experience to be readily conceivable.
I know it is difficult for people in these instructed times to believe in uncle Pullet's ignorance; but let them reflect on the remarkable results of a great natural faculty under favoring circumstances.

And uncle Pullet had a great natural faculty for ignorance.