n as I can; but I can’t see any one just yet, except Dr. Kenn. I’ve been to him — he will advise me, and help me to get some occupation. I can’t live with any one, or be dependent on them, tell aunt Glegg; I must get my own bread. But did you hear nothing of Philip — Philip Wakem? Have you Laurent Koscielny Jersey never seen any one that has mentioned him?”
“No, my dear; but I’ve been to Lucy’s, and I saw your uncle, and he says they got her to listen to the letter, and she took notice o’ Miss Guest, and asked questions, and the doctor thinks she’s on the turn to be better. What a world this is — what trouble, oh dear! The law was the first beginning, and it’s gone from bad to worse, all of a sudden, just when the luck seemed on the turn?” This was the first lamentation that Mrs. Tulliver had let slip to Maggie, Yasser Corona Jersey but old habit had been revived by the interview with sister Glegg.
“My poor, poor mother!” Maggie burst out, cut to the heart with pity and compunction, and throwing her arms round her mother’s neck; “I was always naughty and troublesome to you. And now you might have been happy if it hadn’t been for me.”
“Eh, my dear,” said Mrs. Tulliver, leaning toward the warm young cheek; “I must put up wi’ my children — I shall never have no more; and if they bring me bad luck, I must be fond on it. There’s nothing else much to be fond on, for my furnitur’ went long ago. And you’d got to be very good once; I can’t think how it’s turned out the wrong way so!”
Still two or three more days passed, and Maggie heard nothing of Philip; anxiety about him was becoming her predominant trouble, and she summoned courage at last to inquire about him of Dr. Kenn, on his next visit to her. He Regan Poole Jersey did not even know if Philip was at home. The elder Wakem was made moody by an accumulation of annoyance; the disappointment in this young Jetsome, to whom, apparently, he was Switzerland Drakt a good deal attached, had been followed close by the catastrophe to his son’s hopes after he had done violence to his own Adrien Rabiot Jersey strong feeling by conceding to them, Frank Fabra Jersey and had incautiously mentioned this concession in St. Ogg’s; and he was almost fierce in his brusqueness when any one asked him a question about his son.
But Philip could hardly have been ill, or it would have been known through the calling in of the medical man; it was probable that he was gone out of the town for a little while. Maggie sickened under this suspense, and her imagination began to live more and more persistently in what Philip was enduring. What did he believe about her?
At last Bob brought her a letter, without a postmark, directed in a hand which she knew familiarly in the letters of her own name — a hand in which her name had been written long ago, in a pocket Shakespeare which she possessed. Her mother was in the room, and Maggie, in violent agitation, hurried upstairs that she might read the letter in solitude. She read Nicolas Pareja Jersey it with a throbbing brow.
“Maggie — I believe in you; I know you never meant to deceive me; I know you tried to ke |
