week, so as you may hear what Sister Glegg and Sister Pullet have got
to say about it? There's a couple o' fowl _wants_ killing!"

"You may kill every fowl i' the yard if you like, Bessy, but I shall
ask neither aunt nor uncle what I'm to do wi' my own lad," said Mr.
Tulliver.

"Dear heart!" said Mrs. Tulliver, "how can you talk so, Mr. Tulliver?
However, if Tom's to go to a new school, I should like him to go where
I can wash him and mend him; else he might as well have calico as
linen, for they'd be one as yallow as th' other before they'd been
washed half a dozen times. And then, when the box is goin' backards
and forrards, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork-pie, or an apple."

"Well, well, we won't send him out o' reach o' the carrier's cart, if
other things fit in," said Mr. Tulliver. "But you mustn't put a spoke
i' the wheel about the washin' if we can't get a school near enough.
But it's an uncommon puzzling thing to know what school to pick."

Mr. Tulliver paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands into his
pockets, as if he hoped to find some idea there. Then he said, "I know
what I'll do, I'll talk it over wi' Riley. He's coming to-morrow."

"Well, Mr. Tulliver, I've put the sheets out for the best bed, and
Kezia's got 'em hanging at the fire. They aren't the best sheets, but
they're good enough for anybody to sleep in, be he who he will."

As Mrs. Tulliver spoke she drew a bright bunch of keys from her pocket,
and singled out one, rubbing her thumb and finger up and down it with a
placid smile while she looked at the clear fire.

"I think I've hit it, Bessy," said Mr. Tulliver, after a short silence.
"Riley's as likely a man as any to know o' some school; he's had
schooling himself, an' goes about to all sorts o' places--auctioneering
and vallyin' and that. I want Tom to be such a sort o' man as Riley,
you know--as can talk pretty nigh as well as if it was all wrote out
for him, and a good solid knowledge o' business too."

"Well," said Mrs. Tulliver, "so far as talking proper, and knowing
everything, and walking with a bend in his back, and setting his hair
up, I shouldn't mind the lad being brought up to that. But them
fine-talking men from the big towns mostly wear the false shirt-fronts;
they wear a frill till it's all a mess, and then hide it with a bib;--I
know Riley does. And then, if Tom's to go and live at Mudport, like
Riley, he'll have a house with a kitchen hardly big e