“What! they mustn’t say any harm o’ Tom, eh?” said Mr Tulliver, looking at Maggie with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr Riley, as though Maggie couldn’t hear, “She understands what one’s talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read,—straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But it’s bad—it’s bad,” Mr Tulliver added sadly, checking this blamable exultation. “A woman’s no business wi’ being so clever; it’ll turn to trouble, I doubt. But bless you!”—here the exultation was clearly recovering the mastery,—“she’ll read the books and understand ’em better nor half the folks as are growed up.”
Maggie’s cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement. She thought Mr Riley would have a respect for her now; it had been evident that he thought nothing of her before.
Mr Riley was turning over the leaves of the book, and she could make nothing of his face, with its high-arched eyebrows; but he presently looked at her, and said,—
“Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some pictures,—I want to know what they mean.”
Maggie, with deepening colour, went without hesitation to Mr Riley’s elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and tossing back her mane, while she said,—
“Oh, I’ll tell you what that means. It’s a dreadful picture, isn’t it? But I can’t help looking at it. That old woman in the water’s a witch,—they’ve put her in to find out whether she’s a witch or no; and if she swims she’s a witch, and if she’s drowned—and killed, you know—she’s innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old woman. But what good would it do her then, you know, when she was drowned? Only, I suppose, she’d go to heaven, and God would make it up to her. And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo, laughing,—oh, isn’t he ugly?—I’ll tell you what he is. He’s the Devil really” (here Maggie’s voice became louder and more emphatic), “and not a right blacksmith; for the Devil takes the shape of wicked men, and walks about and sets people doing wicked things, and he’s oftener in the shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if people saw he was the Devil, and he roared at ’em, they’d run away, and he couldn’t make ’em do what he pleased.”
Mr Tulliver had listened to this exposition of Maggie’s with petrifying wonder.
“Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?” he burst out at last.
“‘The History of the Devil,’ by Daniel Defoe,—not quite the right book for a little girl,” said Mr Riley. “How came it among your books, Mr Tulliver?”
Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said,—