ry cruel! Hadn't she wanted to give
him the money, and said how very sorry she was? She had never been
naughty to Tom--had never meant to be naughty to him.

"Oh, he is cruel!" Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in
the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the
attic. She was too miserable to be angry.

III. THE MAKING UP

Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be tea
time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking of her. Well,
then, she would stay up there and starve herself--hide herself behind
the tub, and stay there all night; and then they would all be
frightened, and Tom would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought as she crept
behind the tub; but presently she began to cry again at the idea that
they didn't mind her being there.

Tom had been too much interested in going the round of the premises, to
think of Maggie and the effect his anger had produced on her. He meant
to punish her, and that business having been performed, he occupied
himself with other matters, like a practical person. But when he had
been called in to tea, his father said, "Why, where's the little wench?"
and Mrs. Tulliver, almost at the same moment, said, "Where's your little
sister?"--both of them having supposed that Maggie and Tom had been
together all the afternoon.

"I don't know," said Tom. He didn't want to "tell" of Maggie, though he
was angry with her; for Tom Tulliver was a lad of honor.

"What! hasn't she been playing with you all this while?" said the
father. "She'd been thinking of nothing but your coming home."

"I haven't seen her this two hours," says Tom, commencing on the plum
cake.

"Goodness heart! She's got drowned!" exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, rising
from her seat and running to the window. "How could you let her do so?"
she added, as became a fearful woman, accusing she didn't know whom of
she didn't know what.

"Nay, nay, she's none drowned," said Mr. Tulliver. "You've been naughty
to her, I doubt, Tom?"

"I'm sure I haven't, father," said Tom, indignantly. "I think she's in
the house."

"Perhaps up in that attic," said Mrs. Tulliver, "a-singing and talking
to herself, and forgetting all about mealtimes."

"You go and fetch her down, Tom," said Mr. Tulliver, rather sharply, his
perspicacity or his fatherly fondness for Maggie making him suspect that
the lad had been hard upon "the little un," else she would never have
left his side. "And be