and things. I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad,--I should
be sorry for him to be a raskill,--but a sort o' engineer, or a
surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Riley, or one o' them
smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big
watch-chain and a high stool. They're pretty nigh all one, and they're
not far off being even wi' the law, _I_ believe; for Riley looks
Lawyer Wakem i' the face as hard as one cat looks another. _He's_ none
frightened at him."

Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blond comely woman in a
fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it is since fan-shaped
caps were worn, they must be so near coming in again. At that time,
when Mrs. Tulliver was nearly forty, they were new at St. Ogg's, and
considered sweet things).

"Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best: _I've_ no objections. But hadn't I
better kill a couple o' fowl, and have th' aunts and uncles to dinner
next 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, defiantly.

"Dear heart!" said Mrs. Tulliver, shocked at this sanguinary rhetoric,
"how can you talk so, Mr. Tulliver? But it's your way to speak
disrespectful o' my family; and sister Glegg throws all the blame
upo'me, though I'm sure I'm as innocent as the babe unborn. For
nobody's ever heard me say as it wasn't lucky for my children to have
aunts and uncles as can live independent. Howiver, if Tom's to go to a