CHAPTER VIII.
Mr.Tulliver Shows His Weaker Side "Suppose sister Glegg should call her money in; it 'ud be very awkward for you to have to raise five hundred pounds now," said Mrs.Tulliver to her husband that evening, as she took a plaintive review of the day.
Mrs.Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired.

Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal goldfish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass.

Mrs.Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and after running her head against the same resisting medium for thirteen years would go at it again to-day with undulled alacrity.
This observation of hers tended directly to convince Mr.Tulliver that it would not be at all awkward for him to raise five hundred pounds; and when Mrs.Tulliver became rather pressing to know _how_ he would raise it without mortgaging the mill and the house which he had said he never _would_ mortgage, since nowadays people were none so ready to lend money without security, Mr.Tulliver, getting warm, declared that Mrs.Glegg might do as she liked about calling in her money, he should pay it in whether or not.

He was not going to be beholden to his wife's sisters.

When a man had married into a family where there was a whole litter of women, he might have plenty to put up with if he chose.