"How can you talk so, Mr. Tulliver? She's too big a gell—gone nine, and tall of her age—to have her hair cut short.—Maggie, Maggie," continued the mother, as the child herself entered the room, "where's the use o' my telling you to keep away from the water? You'll tumble in and be drownded some day, and then you'll be sorry you didn't do as mother told you."
Maggie threw off her bonnet. Now, Mrs. Tulliver, desiring her daughter to have a curled crop, had had it cut too short in front to be pushed behind the ears; and as it was usually straight an hour after it had been taken out of paper, Maggie was incessantly tossing her head to keep the dark, heavy locks out of her gleaming black eyes.
"Oh dear, oh dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin' of, to throw your bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, there's a good gell, an' let your hair be brushed, an' put your other pinafore on, an' change your shoes—do, for shame; an' come and go on with your patchwork, like a little lady."
"O mother," said Maggie in a very cross tone, "I don't want to do my patchwork."
"What! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your Aunt Glegg?"
"It's silly work," said Maggie, with a toss of her mane—"tearing things to pieces to sew 'em together again. And I don't want to sew anything for my Aunt Glegg; I don't like her."
Exit Maggie, drawing her bonnet by the string, while Mr. Tulliver laughs audibly.
"I wonder at you as you'll laugh at her, Mr. Tulliver," said the mother. "An' her aunts will have it as it's me spoils her."