“I think Philip Wakem seems a nice boy, Tom,” she said, when they went out of the study together into the garden, to pass the interval before dinner. “He couldn’t choose his father, you know; and I’ve read of very bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad children. And if Philip is good, I think we ought to be the more sorry for him because his father is not a good man. You like him, don’t you?”
“Oh, he’s a queer fellow,” said Tom, curtly, “and he’s as sulky as can be with me, because I told him his father was a rogue. And I’d a right to tell him so, for it was true; and he began it, with calling me names. But you stop here by yourself a bit, Maggie, will you? I’ve got something I want to do upstairs.”
“Can’t I go too?” said Maggie, who in this first day of meeting again loved Tom’s shadow.
“No, it’s something I’ll tell you about by-and-by, not yet,” said Tom, skipping away.
In the afternoon the boys were at their books in the study, preparing the morrow’s lessons that they might have a holiday in the evening in honour of Maggie’s arrival. Tom was hanging over his Latin grammar, moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but impatient Catholic repeating his tale of paternosters; and Philip, at the other end of the room, was busy with two volumes, with a look of contented diligence that excited Maggie’s curiosity; he did not look at all as if he were learning a lesson. She sat on a low stool at nearly a right angle with the two boys, watching first one and then the other; and Philip, looking off his book once toward the fire-place, caught the pair of questioning dark eyes fixed upon him. He thought this sister of Tulliver’s seemed a nice little thing, quite unlike her brother; he wished he had a little sister. What was it, he wondered, that made Maggie’s dark eyes remind him of the stories about princesses being turned into animals? I think it was that her eyes were full of unsatisfied intelligence, and unsatisfied beseeching affection.
“I say, Magsie,” said Tom at last, shutting his books and putting them away with the energy and decision of a perfect master in the art of leaving off, “I’ve done my lessons now. Come upstairs with me.”
“What is it?” said Maggie, when they were outside the door, a slight suspicion crossing her mind as she remembered Tom’s preliminary visit upstairs. “It isn’t a trick you’re going to play me, now?”
“No, no, Maggie,” said Tom, in his most coaxing tone; “It’s something you’ll like ever so.”
He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round his waist, and twined together in this way, they went upstairs.
“I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know,” said Tom, “else I shall get fifty lines.”