ch dirt."

"There it is, Bessy; it's what I've been telling you," said Mrs.
Pullet. "It's your children; there's no knowing what they'll come to."

Mrs. Tulliver went out to speak to these naughty children, supposing
them to be close at hand; but it was not until after some search that
she found Tom leaning with rather a careless air against the white
paling of the poultry-yard, and lowering his piece of string on the
other side as a means of teasing the turkey-cock.

"Tom, you naughty boy, where's your sister?" said Mrs. Tulliver in a
distressed voice.

"I don't know," said Tom.

"Why, where did you leave her?" said his mother, looking round.

"Sitting under the tree against the pond," said Tom.

"Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could
you think o' going to the pond, and taking your sister where there was
dirt? You know she'll do mischief, if there's mischief to be done."

The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond roused a fear in Mrs.
Tulliver's mind, and she mounted the horse-block to satisfy herself by
a sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked--not very quickly--on his
way towards her.

"They're such children for the water, mine are," she said aloud,
without reflecting that there was no one to hear her; "they'll be
brought in dead and drownded some day. I wish that river was far
enough."

But when she not only failed to see Maggie, but presently saw Tom
returning from the pond alone, she hurried to meet him.

"Maggie's nowhere about the pond, mother," said Tom; "she's gone away."

Chapter VIII.

MAGGIE AND THE GIPSIES.

After Tom and Lucy had walked away, Maggie's quick mind formed a plan
which was not so simple as that of going home. No; she would run away
and go to the gipsies, and Tom should never see her any more. She had
been often told she was like a gipsy, and "half wild;" so now she would
go and live in a little brown tent on the common.

The gipsies, she considered, would gladly receive her, and pay her much
respect on account of her superior knowledge. She had once mentioned
her views on this point to Tom, and suggested that he should stain his
face brown, and they should run away together; but Tom rejected the
scheme with contempt, observing that gipsies were thieves, and hardly
got anything to eat, and had nothing to drive but a donkey. To-day,
however, Maggie thought her misery had reached a pitch at which
gipsydom was her only refuge