xpression of
public opinion. Mr. Rappit, the hairdresser, with his well-anointed
coronal locks tending wavily upward, like the simulated pyramid of flame
on a monumental urn, seemed to her at that moment the most formidable
of her contemporaries, into whose street at Saint Ogg's she would
carefully refrain from entering through the rest of her life.

Already, at twelve o'clock, Mrs. Tulliver had on her visiting costume,
with a protective apparatus of brown holland, as if she had been a piece
of satin furniture in danger of flies; Maggie was frowning and twisting
her shoulders, that she might if possible shrink away from the
prickliest of tuckers, while her mother was remonstrating, "Don't,
Maggie, my dear; don't make yourself so ugly!" and Tom's cheeks were
looking particularly brilliant as a relief to his best blue suit, which
he wore with becoming calmness, having, after a little wrangling,
effected what was always the one point of interest to him in his toilet:
he had transferred all the contents of his everyday pockets to those
actually in wear.

As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as she had been yesterday;
no accidents ever happened to her clothes, and she was never
uncomfortable in them, so that she looked with wondering pity at Maggie,
pouting and writhing under the exasperating tucker. Maggie would
certainly have torn it off, if she had not been checked by the
remembrance of her recent humiliation about her hair; as it was, she
confined herself to fretting and twisting, and behaving peevishly about
the card houses which they were allowed to build till dinner, as a
suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best clothes. Tom could
build perfect pyramids of houses; but Maggie's would never bear the
laying on the roof. It was always so with the things that Maggie made;
and Tom had deduced the conclusion that no girls could ever make
anything. But it happened that Lucy proved wonderfully clever at
building; she handled the cards so lightly, and moved so gently, that
Tom condescended to admire her houses as well as his own, the more
readily because she had asked him to teach her. Maggie, too, would have
admired Lucy's houses, and would have given up her own unsuccessful
building to contemplate them, without ill temper, if her tucker had not
made her peevish, and if Tom had not inconsiderately laughed when her
houses fell, and told her she was "a stupid."

"Don't laugh at me, Tom!" she burst out angri